Intarsia in the round

Wrap-and-turn short rows and intarsia: two of the least-favorite knitting techniques among knitters. But if you put them together, you can do intarsia in the round, which is kind of mind-blowing.

My first foray into intarsia in the round came because I fell in love with this sock pattern, Tilt & Twist. The way the pattern works is that you use intarsia in the round to knit your sock out of four different colorways (plus a fifth for the toes, heel, and cuffs). The intarsia strips circle around your foot, giving it even more "zazz."

I loved this idea, and I was intrigued to try the technique. I had heard of it before, but never bothered to track it down. So I bought five contrasting skeins of Red Heart Heart & Sole sock yarn and got started.

Intarsia cannot be worked in the round if you knit in the usual fashion, because you will find yourself stranded on the other side of the intarsia patch without a new bit of yarn to start knitting. Because of this, intarsia has to be worked back and forth.

The term "intarsia in the round" is somewhat misleading. What you actually end up doing is knitting a tube back and forth, basically just one big set of short rows. The ends of each short row form an interlocking line of wrap-and-turns. You knit around, wrap-and-turn, purl around, wrap-and-turn, knit around, ad infinitum.

In conjunction with this wrap-and-turn action, the Tilt & Twist pattern also has you making four intarsia switches per round in each direction. As well as advancing the colors in order to make them spiral (either fast or slow, depending on which pattern you choose). You can also use fewer colors, or use all the colors but don't make them spiral, or spiral them extra-fast by moving them on each round. So many amazing possibilities open up once you master this technique!

Image courtesy Flickr/justclaire