Casting on with more than one colour on a machine

Hello! Hope everyone’s well!

I’m going to attempt to make this beautiful map sweater on my LK 150 but I can’t for the life of me find out how to cast on with more than one colour on a machine! Does anyone know or could point me in the direction of a tutorial?

Thanks so much!

This has been such a cleverly worked sweater in all its variations.
Maybe @FluffyYarn @Mel61 @flknit5 or other machine knitters can advise.

Hiya, this looks like it’s intarsia.
You can get an intarsia carriage for the LK150, but in effect, you are virtually knitting this manually.
The intarsia carriage doesn’t carry yarn - it merely knits back stitches after you have laid the appropriate coloured yarns in the relevant latches of the needles (and twisted them as appropriate between rows to stop the holes). The tension is created by whatever you clip onto the strands to hold them in place, v rather than the usual tension spring mechanism.

I bought an intarsia carriage some time ago but haven’t got around to using it yet! I was put off by the potential tension issues and I’ll try out some swatches first before embarking on a possibly expensive project!

1 Like

This shows how it works!

In some ways, stranded and mosaic knitting is easier on the Lk150 ( you have to pass the carriage for each colour per row for stranded IE two carriage passes per row if 2 colours are being knit) because you can do it with the standard carriage.

( You can no longer get a fairisle carriage for the lk150 and second hand ones are very rare and furiously expensive!! )

Good Afternoon Mel61
It is not something I have attempted. A quick search led me to this website https://www.knititnow.com/blog/1048/intarsia-on-the-machine
Scroll to item 3 Manual Intarsia - it gives basic instructions but then it requires a subscription to go further. It might help you get started.
I got this response to a general search To knit intarsia with multiple colors on a knitting machine, you can use the hold position and multiple carriage passes, or use an intarsia carriage:

  • Hold position and multiple carriage passes
    Select the needles for color 1, put the other needles in hold, and thread the carriage with color 1. Knit the needles in work, then put the needles in hold and put the needles for color 2 into work. Repeat, following a chart.
    Good Luck it is a beautiful pattern.
1 Like

Thanks! I was replying to another person’s query!
The method you’ve set out is the one to use for stranded knitting - the yarn is carried across the whole bed with each pass and the yarn travels behind the unworked stitches. I can see how you can do this with very large colour blocks ( but each block would need its own bobbin/ pass) and might be manageable with a very simple design but I’ve done stranded knitting on the machine and even two passes per row is unwieldy over a whole sweater! Changing colours means rethreading the machine and with this pattern, this is probably 3-4 times per row!!

To work more complex intarsia, you need to load up all the colours on the respective needles and knit them on a single carriage pass ( the yarn has to be wound onto separate bobbins just as you would with handknitting). The intarsia carriage just knits the needles back, but as the video shows, the yarn is just draped across the open latches and does not pass through the usual tension spring etc of the knitting machine. Therefore, I think an even tension can’t be guaranteed as when using the usual carriage.

Personally, this is one I’d do by hand!

I dont do intarsia on my patterning machines. I did it on my Bond way back when it was all I had. Other than taking care to cross the yarns between colors, it was pretty simple. But the Bond had no tensioning mast & all the yarns went through the machine in an almost normal manner when laid in the open needles for intarsia. I think doing it on a machine would befaster than hand knitting. But you have to watch every row like a hawk. (Being sure yarns are crosses consistently.

As for casting on in 2 colors, I’d use a waste yarn , ravel cord, then cast on each block separately, crossing the yarns as for intarsian on tahat row. But from what I can see you rib the bottom anyway. In which case you could start your intarsia immediately after it is done. Or if you dont have a ribber, you could hand knit the rib & hang it, then proceed with no need of additional cast on. Are you trying to bring the patern down into the rib? I could be wrong but it looks like there is a narrow rib (or maybe hem) at the bottom of that sweater.

I have a globe pattern in a back issue of Vogue (circa 1990s) by Patricia somebody. It has a great big textured shawl collar & I always admired it. But never got around to making it. She was quite a popular designer back then. I think her continents were larger relative to the background. Not sure. But this one seems to show more background than hers did.

Both versions are stunners, imo.

Hello Mel @flknit5 and @FluffyYarn! I’m so sorry to use up your time on such comprehensive replies, I don’t think I was clear enough on my post. I actually have an intarsia carriage but what I’m a bit stuck on is that I’d need to cast on half with one colour and half with another and I have no idea how to do that without having a gap at the bottom!

I am actually tempted just to do this one by hand. It’s a challenge either way but I’m really just learning the machine so maybe it’s a step too far. I’ve done some intarsia on the machine but I just love that pattern so much it’s going to get made one way or another!

Thank you so much, I really appreciate you all!

Aha!
What sort of cast on do you want to do? ( I often just use an open cast on, onto a rag, and then cast off by hand, only because that gives me a whole load of cast offs to choose between!)
If you do an e-wrap cast on over the relevant stitches, and then twist the strand around the next colour strand before doing the next e- wrap cast on, that should eliminate a gap. You’ll need to twist the yarns that you lay in the hooks before you knit back the e-wraps.
You will need to twist / cross each different coloured strand every row. You should have one tail to darn in at the cast on colour change point, so that will also give you the opportunity to close any gap at that point.
Is that what you’re after? If you’ve tried your intarsia carriage, you’ll be more skilled than I at it!!