Bacon Bookmark Photo & Graph

I used yarns from my stash for this project, Lang's Jawoll sock weight(doubled) in beige or white for the background and Brown Sheep NatureSpun sport weight in red or pink for contrast. Needles, size 4. Silly as it seems, I charted a piece of bacon for the pattern.
I knit the graph starting from both the short and long sides. The "raw" version of the bacon was knit in garter stitch, 10 stitches across for 60 rows, using the intarsia method of color changes. The choice of garter stitch produced knitting that lies flat. Because three different colors (white, red, pink) were used over only 10 stitches, knitting was annoyingly slow. The results were more successful.

The "cooked" version of the bacon was knit, using 60 stitches for 12 rather than 10 rows, to allow space for the cast-on and cast-off rows. This version was knit rapidly. I cast on and knit 3 rows in red. The remaining rows were knit in beige. I then used the chart to duplicate stitch the details in red yarn. I chose this method to avoid stranding yarn all across the back and to spare my temper for another use. Finally, because stockinette stitch curls worse than even real cooked bacon, I flattened the piece against a strip of sticky-backed felt.