I took a break from my current wip (a baby pink jumper) to practice some colour work for the first time.
I recently posted about a jumper that I'm currently obsessed with making called "Santorini" by Rowan. It's so amazing, but does require some pretty detailed intarsia work, which frankly, was way out of my knitting capabilities. But I really want to make it so I've decided to do some practicing.
I found a really cute (free) pattern on Ravelry for a 5 colour intarsia chart which I thought would be perfect. Luckily, being the yarn hoarder that I am, I already had 3 different pinks and 2 different greens.
I did a little bit of research and everywhere said that I had to use little bobbins which had a little bit of yarn from each colour of the pattern. I didn't have any so I went all A-Team like and made my own from a bit of stiff card.
At the time, I had posted a pic of the bobbins and chart to instagram. I was already 10 rows into it and finding the tangled mess of yarns a bit tedious. A lovely lady (who is also going to be my knitting partner when I knit Santorini) told me she'd watch a tutorial once and they recommended just using short bits of yarn rather than bobbins. I tried this and wow, it was sooo much easier! I definitely would have struggled later on if I'd stuck with the bobbins!
After a few hours, I'd completed the little 30x40 chart. Lots of lessons learnt and techniques discovered about intarsia knitting. I got told once that you can carry the main yarn every couple of stitches so you don't have a huge bit at the back once you get to the other side. Of course in the beginning I either 1. forgot or 2. didn't leave it slack enough. By the end I'd got the hang of it pretty well. It didn't stop the back looking like a hot mess though.
I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out, it's looks so pretty! By no means perfect, but I think it's a pretty good first try at intarsia knitting :)
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