This is part two of Intarsia How-To, in response to several questions and comments. Thanks for those!
Two common ways to prepare yarn for intarsia work are bobbins and yarn butterflies. Here’s an empty bobbin, a bobbin with yarn wound around it, and a yarn butterfly. The slit in the bobbin is so narrow, the yarn cannot unwind by itself. You unwind as much as you need, knit, and wind the extra back up. The bobbin hangs neatly at the back of your work.
The yarn butterfly is a sort of center-pull skein that you wind between your thumb and little finger. Take the last few windings around the middle, and tuck the yarn under itself to tie in place. To knit, pull the other end from the butterfly.
Kary asked: How do you know how much to wind on the bobbin? If you want to count stitches, you can estimate how much yarn to wind Figure out about how many stitches you can make with one inch of yarn, and calculate how many inches you need for the stitches, plus about 8 inches for yarn tails and peace of mind.
I am not a fan of bobbins. I don’t like the weight of them hanging near my knitting needles and dangling around, bumping into each other. It throws off my balance.
Furthermore, being a lazy knitter, I don’t want to wind a bobbin, only to have to unwind it again so I can knit. And of course, the bobbin will probably run out of yarn, six stitches short, which means I have to add another length of yarn for the last six stitches, making two more ends to sew in.
I like to knit straight from the skein when possible. For smaller areas, I make yarn butterflies. If the design has two of the same color area, I often knit from both ends of the skein.
This can be a terrible, tangly mess, but with some planning, it is possible to knit neat and successful intarsia straight from the skein. Here’s how. Put the yarns in a basket or box, roughly in the order that you will use them. Work a couple of rows to get the colors established.
At the beginning of a knit row, make sure all the yarns come straight from the skeins, without crossing, as in the first photo.
Knit across, changing colors correctly as shown in Intarsia How-To. They will cross each other as in the second photo.
So here you are at the end of the knit row. Grab the right hand needle point in your left hand. Rotate the other end of the needle toward you (clockwise) and around so that this becomes the left hand needle.
Purl across, changing colors properly. As each new color taken up, the old color will untangle and hang free of the previous yarn. At the end of the purl row, all yarns will be uncrossed, but they will be twisted by half a turn.
Now you’re at the end of the purl row and the yarns are spiraled halfway around each other just once. So, grab the right hand needle with your left hand. Rotate the other end of the needle away from you (counterclockwise, anticlockwise, widdershins, whatever you call it), and around so that it becomes the left hand needle. Voila! The yarns are all straight again!
If you live in a house where you can knit whole rows without having to put your knitting down, you can go on like this for hours: crossing them all on the knit row, uncrossing them on the purl row. You have to switch the needle around correctly for this to work.
Sarah asked, “How do you add in a new color?”
When the intarsia chart indicates a change, start knitting with the new color, leaving a three inch or so tail of yarn. Finish the row.
On your return row, at some point, you will be using the new color again. When you’re finished with the new color, drop the yarn.
When you change to the next color, reach under the new yarn you dropped, as well as its tail, and pick up the next color. he next color will then cross both the tail of the newly added color and the newly-added color coming from the bobbin. Look at the photo, where the hot pink is crossing the blue yarn and its tail (circled in red).
Darn the new tail back into its own color area.
If the yarns get messed up as you knit, just wait until you’re ready to start a knit row. Then, with the knit row facing you, untangle the yarns so you can start fresh.