Skill Builder: Intarsia

I’ve talked about stranded colorwork a few times, but I’ve been neglecting another kind of colorwork: intarsia.

Stranded colorwork is all about smallish dots of color. Most patterns are worked with two colors at a time, with both colors going across the full row or round.

Intarsia is the opposite in how you do it and what you can do with it.

Intarsia is sometimes called “picture knitting,” because it’s the method you use to make a picture in the middle of your fabric.

You can tell an intarsia project because the colors don’t go all the way to the edges.

MDK’s book Skill Set: Beginning KNitting  offers a starter intarsia project with heart.

The brilliant Kaffe Fassett uses intarsia to create quiltlike color patterns. You can see some of his magnificent intarsia designs in Field Guide No. 16: Painterly.

If you look closely at the projects, you’ll see that they are comprised of blocks of color, each separate and distinct.

The intarsia method is used when stretches of one color are too long to carry the other color across the back, when a color only appears in one (or very few, anyway) places in a row, and when you’ve got more than two colors in a row.

The Cityscape Scarf is worked in blocks, each distinct, each in a different color.

How to Do It

In stranded colorwork, we focus on not twisting our yarns around each other; with intarsia, you must twist. When you’ve finished using one color, you drop that strand, pick up the next one, and twist the two around each other.

In the Cityscape Ccarf chart, there are 48 stitches per row. On row 1, you’ll knit stitches 1-10 in the first color; then drop color 1, tie the next color around it, and knit stitches 11-30; then drop color 2, tie the next color around that, and knit to the end of the row with color 3.

On the wrong side row, purl back stitches 48 to 31 in color 3; drop that yarn, and pick up the color 2, twisting the two ends around each other; purl across stitches 30 to 11; drop that second color and pick up the first, again twisting them around each other, and finish purling the row.

As long as you’re twisting when changing colors, there’s nothing special or different about the knitting; no concern about floats or the fabric getting too tight.

Intarsia is different from stranded colorwork in another way, too: it’s worked in rows, not in the round. For example, if you tried to work the Cityscape chart in the round, when you came back to the end of the round, your first color wouldn’t be where you needed it—it’s hanging off stitch 10, too far away.

Ends? Ends!

With intarsia, you have multiple lengths of yarn attached, one for each section of color. If you have multiple sections of the same color, you will have multiple lengths of that color.

Yup.

And for every length of yarn attached, there’s two ends.

Yup.

So to make this:

The back looks like this:

The ends do have to be dealt with, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to spend the next month weaving them in. The insides of Kaffe Fassett’s projects are legendarily…shaggy.

While you see balls of yarn here, it can be easier to work with shorter lengths, a yard or so long—no need for balls or bobbins.  Kaffe’s famous advice, “Pull from the tangle,” is liberating when working intarsia.

Tip No. 1: Always tie the ends on when you join. Tying the new one on to join it keeps everything tidy and fully secure.

You can leave the ends hanging and things will never unravel; there’s no worry about loose or unstable stitches; you can block/wash before weaving in ends without any worry.

If you want to add a degree of security, or used a different join, you can tie two (or even more) together with an overhand knot. And then go about the rest of your life, without giving them a further thought.

Tip No. 2: Choose to make projects where the ends aren’t going to be visible, like a pullover rather than a cardigan, or a pillow cover. Or, if you’re making a piece where both sides will be visible, sew on a lining.

Tip No. 3: If you decide you really need to weave your ends in, build yourself a schedule and a reward system. Weave in ten a day, for example; or offer yourself a cookie for every ten. Or both! And always weave an end into its own color, as otherwise they might be visible.