Archive of Thread: Intarsia Back

3 years ago
I just worked on my 1st machine knit intarsia project. Truly an experiment - lots of errors, but I'm just learning.
I'm looking for a guide/book/suggestions on this technique.  I have an intarsia carriage (for both my brother 260 and brother 970).  My struggles are with how far can you carry a color over needles.  I don't know how to explain.  so here are the instructions...
4 colors.
COR  White R35-R21  Grey R20-R9  Red R8-L21  White L20-L35
now back
COL   White L35-L22   Red  L21- R15  Grey  R16-R20  White R21-R35

I used the same ball for each color.  Of course I have a big float of gray....is there a rule of thumb on how many needles you can/cannot cross before starting a new ball.
Pics included.
Full disclosure....not my design, I saw this on a FB group, and downloaded old pattern "Patons 495".
 

3 years ago
I LOVE intarsia!

Strictly speaking, there should be NO carrying of yarns from one block to the next.  Towards the top of the pictured sweater you would be using 3 balls of white, 1 ball of grey and 2 balls of red.: As we don't always do what we are supposed to do in this life, I admit that I will sometimes carry a yarn across up to a maximum of 3 stitches.

Here are a couple of intarsia sweaters I knitted a while ago.  The first is from a book of which I forget the title, the other is a Kathleen Kinder design.  They were both great fun to do, although time-consuming - especially darning in all the yarn ends!  Worth it though, I think.

    

Jenny

3 years ago
Jenny....Your sweaters are beautiful. At first, I thought, wow, this is hard (on the brain - haha).  But then I got into somewhat of a rhythm and thought it was fun!  I'm definitely going to give it another try.  Thanks for your help.

3 years ago
@Jenny M Benson  Your sweaters are beautiful!