garter intarsia

To the two of you still out there: I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to get to this. I promised it what? two? three weeks ago?

Oh well, let's commence.

First, if you are wondering what intarsia is: a quick Google search on intarsia knitting will get you started. Also, I've added an archive page with all my blog posts that have mentioned intarsia knitting and show some of the projects I've worked on.

That should get you oriented. Now, garter intarsia.

[Note: for a better look, you can click all the photos in this post to open a window with a bigger view.

Also, I've put the rest of the post after the link at the bottom because this is a photo-heavy post].

Here's a swatch I did with three different colors. [Pardon the sloppy cast on].

This is the front and I'm ready to knit across the row from right-to-left. For the sake of argument let's call this the right side

Here is the back side. This will be the wrong side.

Let's go back to the right side and see what happens when it comes time to switch colors.

I'm done with the green and I want to start to knit with the purple. However, I can't just drop the green and pick up the purple to knit...

...and here's why.

This is sort of a funny picture of the situation. Instead of turning the work around to look at it, this picture is meant to represent what you would see if you held onto you knitting and leaned forward to look at the wrong side. This way, the green stays on the right and the purple on the left.

Now, if we look, we can see that if I get pick up the purple and start knitting, there will be a gap between the colors. I'll need to anchor the green before using the purple and I can do this by twisting one strand over the other like this...

Now, the purple comes up from under the green and there will be no gap between the two colors.

OK, I knit to the end of the row and now it's time to come back in the other direction.

Once again, I get to the change between the purple and the green. This time, however, things are a little different. If this were stockinette intarsia, the situation would be similar to the changing yarns on the right side of the work: both the strand I was putting down and the strand I was picking up would be on the same side of the work. In that case, I would be purling and both strands would be on the side facing me and I could just twist them as I had on the right side (the knit side).

But now, because this is garter, I am knitting on both sides. When it comes time to change, the yarn I am putting down is in the back, but the yarn I want to pick up is in the front.

To get them in the correct position, I'm going to have to switch them by first moving the purple yarn between the needles and to the front, and then, moving the green yarn between the needles and to the back. This will lock the purple strand in place and put both the yarns on the correct sides of the needles to continue.

See, it's actually pretty easy. I don't know why it took me so long to write it up.

I hope at least one of the two of you found this helpful.