Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Knitting Tip: Intarsia in the Round

by

I’ve been working on a project — which I’ll share with you as soon as it’s done! — that is a mostly plain hat with some colorwork. I’d been resistant on working the colorwork section, and once I started knitting it, I realized why: it needed to be worked as intarsia, which you can’t really do in the traditional way in the round.

working intarsia in the roundIntarsia is also known as picture knitting, and it involves working a section in one color and another section in another color without stranding the yarn behind the work. So if you have a background color and an accent color, you have one ball of yarn for the background, another ball for the accent, then another ball of the background color to work on the other side.

The trouble with this when working in the round is that your accent color yarn ends on the incorrect side for using it to knit with on the next round. There are a couple of ways you can deal with that:

  • Cut the yarn of every round and start a new strand.
  • Leave a really long tail so you can knit the next round with the tail from the previous round (you’ll still have to start a new strand every two rounds this way).
  • Work back and forth rather than in the round for that section, which requires joining the rounds together (described in this fun pattern from Knitty).
  • Strand the yarn all the way around the work so that you can use the same strand throughout. Make sure you work really loosely if you do it this way.

Check out this great article from Abfabulies for the pros and cons of a couple of these methods, as well as great pictures of what the methods look like on the front and back of the knitting.

I ended up doing some kind of crazy hybrid of stranding and cutting, but when I write the pattern I think I’m going to suggest another method altogether: using duplicate stitch instead.

[Photo via Abfabulies.]

Next Pattern:

Comments

Have you read?

Stitch Some Seagulls on Your Sweater

It’s been well documented that I love a knitting pattern with a bit of whimsy, so when I saw the Mine! Pullover from Sarah L. Kelly recently I knew I had to share it with you.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to knit a sweater with a yoke full of seagulls? And another seagull at the waist? Chasing little crabs?

The story behind the sweater (and you knew there had to be one, right?) is that while Sarah was traveling around Europe there were a lot of cheeky seagulls about. They reminded her of the scene in Finding Nemo where the seagulls say “mine, mine, mine” and thus the Mine! series of patterns was born. 

Oh yes, there’s a whole set. It was the sweater I saw first but there’s also a pair of socks (and the pattern says there’s a cowl, too, but I couldn’t find it as of this writing. If you see it let me know and I’ll add the link here!) so you can totally deck yourself out in pesky seabirds if you want.

But back to the sweater for now. This is worked in DK weight yarn from the top down in the round. The yoke and a section at the bottom are worked in stranded colorwork, with stripes on the body, though you could make the body a single color if you wanted. Details like the beaks and eyes are added with duplicate stitch to make the knitting a little easier.

The colorwork sections are charted. The pattern comes in 10 sizes, with a finished chest circumference ranging from 32 to 68 inches, or 80 to 170 cm.

The socks are worked in sock yarn and come in three sizes. There worked from the cuff down and change needle sizes to accommodate the less stretchy nature of stranded colorwork. You can choose from a side profile or a seagull that’s looking out from the sock. Make a matching pair or mix it up.

Both patterns are available on Ravelry: sweater and socks. If you make them I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Sarah L. Kelly]