Take the stress out of intarsia colourwork and get fabulous results every time with Rachael Prest’s handy tips and tricks
INTARSIA IS often spoken of by knitters in hushed tones. For ages, I thought attempting it would require much girding of loins and squaring of shoulders before diving into the complexities it promised. In fact, it’s an incredibly simple concept. I think that, often, what intimidates people is the idea of winding yarn into separate balls (always a chore), or working out the vagaries of yarn management. Well, worry no more: I’m here to offer a few tips and tricks that will help with even the most complex of intarsia projects.
Let’s go back to the absolute basics. What is intarsia? It’s a colourwork technique that involves joining new colours into the fabric mid-row, and knitting a number of stitches in that colour without stranding the other colours behind it. It’s particularly good for items where several colours feature in one row, or if colourwork motifs are large and/or non-repeating. It reduces yarn waste, and eliminates any tension differences inherent in stranded colourwork.
The basic set-up involves winding all the different yarns required into smaller balls or onto bobbins, and joining each new bobbin every time a motif starts or ends.
My first tip, and it’s a biggie, is: don’t work from the full ball when working intarsia. I was originally going to say never work from the full ball, but there are caveats. For example, if your intarsia project involves one main colour and a single motif worked at any one time, it’s possible to manage your yarn from a larger ball or balls. I still wouldn’t recommend it, though – it’s much easier to manage several smaller balls than it is to manage a few small ones, and a giant one that keeps rolling off or getting twisted in behind the others when the work is turned.
WINDING OFF YARN
So, how much yarn do you actually need to wind off at a time? This is a bit like the ever-vexing question of how much yarn you need to put aside for a long-tail cast-on – literally, how long is a piece of string? With a little (honestly – a very little) time, and minimal effort, you can calculate how much yarn a particular motif might need.
Before we delve into that, though, if you’re working with larger motifs, you’ll probably end up having to join more yarn in during the motif at some stage, so it’s only really for smaller motifs that this i
