Fair Isle in the round?? :(

[brolie]

So I have recently had two orders for scarves that have images in them. One has the skull and bones and the other one has four leaf clovers. Easy to do on straight needles with fair isle to make the images, but then it becomes stockinette and roles. Yes yes yes. So I have started making all of my scarves in the round since I can keep the stockinette stitch (OH! how I hate garter...) So I have tried a mix of fair isle and intarsia... i still get gaps on one side or the other or bunched up images in the pattern... is this something I shouldn't even be trying to attempt or does someone out there have a secret they would like to share with me?? :D

Skull and bones so far:

[salmonmac]

"i still get gaps on one side or the other or bunched up images in the pattern"
The patterns should work perfectly well in the round as long as you're not pulling the yarn too tightly when you carry it across (but this would hold for the pattern on straight needles as well).
I'm not sure where the gaps you describe are occurring. On one side or the other of the intarsia? If so and if they're not too big, I find that kind of gap disappears on blocking.

[Jan in CA]

Fair Isle is best done in the round. That keeps the floats hidden inside the tube. Intarsia is usually done flat and more difficult to do in the round w/o special instructions.

They both take practice in order to avoid the wrinkling an pulling you see you see in your work. You have to make the floats loose in stranded knitting or that happens.

There are videos here in the KH video section and here's a few more to help you out.

http://www.philosopherswool.com/Page...andedvideo.htm
http://www.berroco.com/video/intarsia_basics.html

[brolie]

with the intarsia i was having to cut my main color yarn too so i could connect the two in order for it to look nice.

i have a decent amount of experience and pratice with both, but neither in the round :(

withthe fair isle, i am pulling the yarn from the far side and looping it with the main color where my image begins, but when i get to the end, it has nothing to loop with since im just bringing my main color from the first side to the other, so i'm getting gaps there. because it's fairly loose, it's sloppy on the sides:



and the pattern isn't really great for fair isle either, just dont really have options:



jan- i have actually been both of those places... thank you! maybe i'm just a bad knitter... :(

[RochesterKnitter]

Either carry the yarn more loosely across the back.

Or make the hat inside out, as it forces you to carry the yarn longer on the outside. If, however, you are trying to avoid purling, this is not advisable, as you would have to purl the whole thing to get a stockinette appearance on the outside.

[brolie]

its not purling that i mind, just the way garter stitch looks.

im wondering if i just keep it REALLY loose if i can tighten it so that it wont pull apart if someone tugs at the sides.

[MerigoldinWA]

On the skull and cross bones one the distances between the motifs is so far that you really need to carry the yarn a long ways to work it fair isle. With such contrasting yarns I find that hard to do successfully because the places you catch the white in as you carry it across the black tend to show a bit. To minimize that don't cross them over each other each time, but do them randomly. If you can get the spaces between the motifs to look good the skulls themselves shouldn't really be a problem.

I'm not sure what you mean by you are doing a mixture of fair isle and intarsia? Do you mean you did the big skull intarsia and are doing the little ones fair isle? If you are cutting the yarn between the little ones I wouldn't call that fair isle. I have never tried to use the intarsia method in the round.

The little motifs would be easy to do fair isle, it would just be the black areas between them that would pose a problem.

On the thing with the shamrock... is that done in St st too? It is hard to tell. Is there only one shamrock? If so it is not a very good candidate for fair isle. And like I said I've never done intarsia in the round. Maybe you would have better luck doing this with duplicate stitch.

[Jan in CA]

So you're trying to do intarsia in the round and you're cutting the yarn because it won't be on the right side of the work when get back around?

If that is the case you see why that is the problem with doing intarsia in the round. You need to twist the yarns in order to close up any gaps. Now there IS a way to do it, but I've not done it. There are a few tutorials, but this looks like the best one to me. I've been making stash/charity hats so I may have to give this a try sometime.
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall07/PATTintarsiafun.html

Knitting also has a video for sale about intarsia and it has instructions for knitting in the round
http://www.knittinghelp.com/shop/pro...with-anne-berk

[brolie]

the hat helps sooo much.. i didnt think about slip knotting.. that will help tooons... thanks so much!!

and thanks everyone else too :D i think i might be able to redo these without them looking as bad as they do .. hah..

[Jan in CA]

Great! Glad I could help! Let us know how it goes!