Intarsia knitting is a technique used to create patterns with multiple colors). It is similar to the woodworking technique of the same name, where fields of different colors and materials appear to be inlaid in one another, fit together like a jigsaw puzzle). Unlike Fair Isle knitting, where two or more colors are carried with you as you knit your row or weave in floats every 4 or 5 stitches, intarsia knitting allows you to create panels in a different color/yarn in the middle of your project by using a special joining method. The second color that youre knitting with is actually a block or a blob surrounded by the other color, and youre not carrying strands or floats in the back of the work.

Intarsia is most often worked flat, rather than in the round, but it is possible to knit intarsia in circular knitting using particular techniques). Common examples of intarsia include sweaters with large, solid-color features like fruits, flowers, or geometric shapes. Argyle socks and sweaters are normally done in intarsia, although the thin diagonal lines are often overlaid in a later step, using Swiss darning or sometimes just a simple backstitch).

Knitting in intarsia theoretically requires no additional skills beyond being generally comfortable with the basic knit and purl stitches). Materials required include multiple colors of yarn, standard needles, and bobbins). Bobbins serve to contain the inactive yarn and help keep it from getting tangled). Intarsia patterns are almost always given as charts, which are read beginning at the lower right and continuing upward). The charts generally look like highly pixellated cartoon drawings, in this sense resembling dot-matrix computer graphics or needlepoint patterns (though usually without the color)).