Different Color Yarn Question

Hi, I’m a newbie (to this forum and to knitting in general) and I have a question that I would really appreciate any help with…

What’s the best way to go about knitting a simple scarf with two colors? I want to border one color with another, basically, but I haven’t found a satisfactory tutorial on how to do so. How would one begin such a thing from casting on, and etc?

Thank you ahead of time for any help you can give.

Do you mean that you want the body of the scarf to be of one color and a border of another?

If this is the case, you start with your border color. When you are ready to change, you knit the border stitches on one side with that color, the center with the main color and the other side of the border with another ball of your contrasting color.

You’re basically using intarsia for this. Every time you change color as you’re knitting, hold the yarn you’re not going to use over to the left and knit with the new color. It will twist them as you go up the scarf to prevent holes. Amy has video here.

How do you -start- intarsia though, like from casting off? I get how to do it once the two colors have already been knitted together for a bit, but how would you go about that from the beginning? And say you wanted to put a diamond-shape in the middle of the scarf with a different color yarn… which method would be better to use (stranding or intarsia) and how do you start it?

Like I said… I am still very much a newbie and I get confused very easily over stupid things… So thank you for your assistence! :smiley:

Any time you want to do a block of color that’s different from the background, you use intarsia. If you have a pattern that goes all the way across, then you use stranded.

What I do is to catch the end of my new color for a few stitches before I knit the first new color stitch. I just kind of twist it in the back under my working yarn. Someday I’ll post some decent pictures of doing this because it’s such a common question.

Or you can just start knitting with the new color and weave it in later. You can, if you want, even tie a knot, though some will say it’s sacreligious! :wink:

A knot? Gasp! :lol:

Thank you so much for your help! I’ll try that then. Is there a tutorial anywhere for weaving in ending strands though? Like the long strand that’s usually left over from casting on? I feel uneasy about just cutting it off…

Here is a good article on weaving in ends. Also when you weave in ends from intarsia, it’s good to weave them in up along where the two colors meet to avoid any ends showing through.

Thank you thank you! :smiley: