I’m such a weenie when it comes to trying new things, but everything in my books that I’ve read about intarsia makes me think it’s not actually that difficult.
Basically, I knitted my father a pillow for his RV. Well, he’s bought a new RV, and (horrors!) the pillow I knitted doesn’t match the decor, so my step-mom’s asked me to make a new one in different colors.
I have a pattern for a pillow with different cable patterns across it. I made one for my son and it turned out nice, so I was thinking about making it again, only making the cabled sections a different color using intarsia.
All the books stated that it’s important to “twist” the yarn to avoid holes, so I think I can do that. Anything else I need to know? Would it be okay to make the cable patterns a different color, or is there something I haven’t considered yet?
Are you thinking of making the whole cable construction a different color from the background, or just the cable itself? I think you may have problems doing the latter, given how much the cabling stretches the edge stitches, and with intarsia you’re already going to be combatting the looseness between colors (even with twisting the yarns). I know when I cable, the last purl stitch before and the first purl stitch after the cable twist end up stretching out of shape a bit, even when it’s all the same strand of yarn.
Basically, intarsia refers to knitting large blocks of a contrasting color in a non-continuous design. To do this, you need to have a separate strand of yarn for each section of color. For instance, if your design involves (to keep it simple) a yellow square in the middle of a field of red, you’d need two separate balls (or bobbins) of red yarn and one of yellow. You’d knit with the first red ball until you get to where you want to start the square, then switch to the yellow ball through the square, then when you’re done with that row of the square, switch to the second ball of red. Going back along the next row (which would be wrongside), you’d go in reverse. Second ball first, then yellow, then first ball.
If you don’t twist the strands when you change colors, you end up knitting three separate items, two red and a yellow.
Intarsia is contrasted with Fair Isle where you carry strands of both (or all) the colors you’re using all along the piece. There’s rarely a block of color wider than five stitches in Fair Isle, because the “float” (the strand of yarn that’s being carried behind the work because it’s not the primary color being worked with)would be unreasonably long and very likely to catch on something every time the item was worn. Fair Isle is what you’re seeing when you see all of those Scandinavian ski hats and sweaters with the tiny snowflake motifs on them.
There are a lot of differences between the two types of colorwork (and there are more types, but those are the two major ones). A big one is that you can’t do intarsia in the round (unless you can figure out how to rectify the situation when you get back to the beginning of your color block and your yarn is still over at the other end). Fair Isle is meant to be done in the round. Fair Isle designs are smaller and more subtle than intarsia designs, but they’re also less capable of complexity or realism, since most Fair Isle is limited to two (occasionally three) colors because of the number of floats that larger numbers of colors would necessitate.
If so, I’d repeat what jayjay said. Cabling often does weird things to tension and intarsia edges often do weird things to tension and adding those two together might not be the most attractive choice - but you can always swatch it and see if it works.
But yes, basically you just twist the yarns to make sure that they link together instead of forming multiple different pieces knit on the same needles at the same time. It is really more straightforward than it sounds from the books. Especially if you’re doing straight lines which “only making the cabled sections a different color using intarsia” sounds like you plan to do.
I carried a solid color background (one yarn carried in back of the cable sections) and then knit each cable in a contrasting color.
If you are going to knit the cable in one color and the background in one color, you don’t have to purl the contrast stitches to the cable. That makes it all easier.
Then you would knit the background, and in the last stitch before the cable starts, knit in the color for the cable (this anchors the colors together). (this means, when you knit the last stitch, put the cable yarn through the back so it is anchored in.) Then knit the cable stitches, knit the background, knit more cable, and when you are ready to go back to basic background, make sure you anchor the background into the back of the last cable stitch. Between the start and the end of the cable sections, if the sections are no more than three stitches across, you can just alternate colors like in fairisle. If it is more than three stitches, make sure you anchor the unused color at least once. (if the gauge is tiny, you can get away with as many as five stitches before anchoring; it is it large, three is the limit.)
The different colors work great, most gap problems can be fixed in blocking, and if the pillow has a nice neutral background, you don’t care anyway.
From what you guys are telling me, it will work, but I’ll have to play around with a smaller piece first to experiment.
I’m finishing up my daughter’s blanket (fairly simple, blocks of color knit in stockingette and seed stich) then I still owe my MIL two mosaic knits for arm chair covers on her sofa.
But…the prospect of another project just tugs at you, doesn’t it?
Man…when it comes to knitting, I am the queen of “Ooooh…shiny!” Once I’ve mastered a skill, it’s time to move on…regardless of the level of completion I’ve attained on the project in question.
I’m knitting this drop-stitch scarf right now…I’m about halfway done, and the only thing keeping me from moving on to something new is that I really want to see it blocked. It’s all curled up right now, but I think it’s going to be nice.
My own pattern, but the cables were adapted from garments in the book Viking Knits (they were all in one color on the sweaters in that book). The author had the cables that turn a corner, and I just had to try it myself, and since I like to knit shawls, that is were it ended up. And I like color.
