purlJam

<planning>
1. **Design Strategy**: 
- Goal: a small, beginner-friendly machine-knit intarsia patch (flat panel) of a female hockey player with a blond ponytail under a helmet, in a red & yellow theme. 
- Technique chosen: single-bed hand-fed intarsia (no ribber), stocking stitch, rectangular patch (no shaping) to keep it simple for beginners. This minimizes transfers and two-bed complexity while still giving a clean motif. Colors: R = main red background and jersey, Y = yellow helmet/highlights, S = skin tone, B = blond hair. All color changes are worked as hand-fed intarsia bobbins or small balls; twist adjacent yarns at color changes to avoid holes.
- Machine suitability: standard-gauge domestic flatbed (4.5 mm bed spacing) using worsted-weight yarn.

2. **Construction Plan**:
- Knit a rectangular patch 24 stitches wide x 36 rows high on the main bed only. Add 1-stitch selvage each side for ease of finishing (total cast-on 26 needles). Use waste yarn + ravel cord cast-on, attach cast-on comb and weights, then knit the charted rows with hand-fed intarsia.
- No shaping: the patch remains rectangular so no needle holding or transfers required during the motif body—this keeps instructions clear for a beginner. All needles are simply brought into work at cast-on and remain in work until the panel is bound off. (If the knitter later wants to shape, explicit per-pass hold/transfer counts would be provided.)

3. **Quality Assurance**:
- Potential pain points: tension changes with multiple hand-fed yarns, snagging when many short yarns are carried, and edge hole formation at color joins. Mitigations: consistent tension dial settings, use of small bobbins per color, twist yarns at every color change to eliminate ladder/hole, apply light weights distributed evenly on the comb, and frequent RC checkpoints for verification.
- Edge stability: include a 1-stitch selvage each side and recommend a finishing row (single color) before bind-off to stabilize edges.
- Fit/size verification: final physical dimensions computed from gauge below; all stitch counts and math are verified.

4. **Final Calculations**:
- Gauge (standard specs for worsted on 4.5 mm domestic machine): 18 stitches = 10 cm (measured in stocking stitch at tension dial approx. 6). 24 rows = 10 cm vertical.