Knitting With Colors

With intarsia knitting, you knit blocks of color using separate balls or bobbins of yarn, twisting them together on the wrong side of the garment wherever you change color. Each block of color uses a separate ball or bobbin, you don't carry colors along from one block to the next.

Here is a great written description of how to knit using the intarsia method.

The secret is to not use bobbins, so forget how many times you've read about bobbins in patterns. Read on to learn why this makes perfect sense, and seems so obvious once you've read it.

Just another example as demonstrated by the esteemed Elizabeth Zimmermann who dedicated her book Knitters Almanac "To all those who do not yet know that they can design their own knitting"!

This scarf is knitting up so slowly, because of size 2 needles and all the color changes. The colors are crazy wild and I'm having fun doing this.

I pick up this project for an evening now and then to break the monotony of knitting yet another pair of felted slippers with chunky yarn on huge needles. Each stripe is started separately and slipped onto a thread for holding until all 7 stripes are knitted for the fringe, then they are all knit together onto a circular needle and the intarsia begins.

Once the body of the scarf is completed, the stripes will be finished up separately as fringe on the other end.

Thanks to The Best of Interweave Knits for the pattern.

Photo Credit: Kathryn Beach

Stranded knitting is best understood by comparing it to Intarsia knitting. The Intarsia technique is best used when you have large blocks of color you want to knit, as in the picture above. Stranded knitting is useful when you are knitting patterns that require color changes within a row of knitting. Traditional Fair Isle knitting is done with only two colors per row, but modern patterns often call for more color changes.

The color(s) not being knit are carried loosely across the back of the knitted fabric. In Intarsia knitting, it is not practical to carry the yarn not being used across a large number of stitches, this inevitably causes puckering of the fabric.

As Elizabeth Zimmermann used to say, there are very few real mistakes in knitting. only stitch patterns waiting to be discovered. Perhaps you'd like a scarf with a bit of pucker in it...if so, ignore the above advice!

~thanks to WikiMedia Commons for the photo~

If you're new to color knitting, then this is the book for you. All in one place, you are tutored in the fundamentals (how to read color charts, how to choose a color palette, and so forth) and you receive training in all three techniques, a pattern treasury, and a few projects to try out your new skill.

For the more experienced knitter, there's a designer's workshop for each technique, enough charts and patterns that you can probably find some you don't already have on hand in another book, and lots of good info in the Yarn Choice and Substitution and the Resources pages to make this book worth buying.

Get more info about Mastering Color Knitting: Simple Instructions for Stranded, Intarsia, and Double Knitting or check out my entire bookshelf at Powell's Books.

True Jacquard hand knitting is virtually impossible, as the technique was developed around the jacquard loom, a punchcard-controlled loom that allowed manufacturers to crank out volumes of knitted fabric with complex, multicolored designs that were both stranded (as in Fair Isle knitting) AND reversible.

I have a sweater that I think of when I think Jacquard - I would never attempt knitting one like it. I suppose I could wear it inside-out, as the inside is all white and just reflects the textured design of the fabric.

The closest I will ever come to Jacquard knitting by hand is maybe stranded knitting with more than two colors per row. Even that is a stretch, however.

Photo by Kathryn Beach

Domino knitting of and by itself is not necessarily knitting with more than one color. You knit a mitered square in garter stitch by decreasing stitches in the middle of every other row. The easiest way to learn is simply to make a domino knitting square, and then learn how to join them together. Here you go: How to Knit Domino Squares

Photo Credit