Knitting:How to change colour?

[Wolfiefan]

I'm trying my first pattern on circular needles. (So far so good.) It is only a little hat! The question is that it has a repeating pattern on it. Do I try and carry yarn over on the back? How? Do I cut some lengths and use a length for each individual pattern piece? Most of the hat is one colour if that helps.
Any ideas? What to watch out for? If there are pitfalls then I will fall into them!?!

Anyone?

Off to google. MN had never failed me before?!? I'm at a loss.

Is it a fair isle type pattern, or intarsia? Have you looked on ravelry for tips?

Do you have a link for the pattern? Ok i'll try and describe. Wrap a small amount of contrasting colour round a bit of card so you have a mini ball. Start your round. When you get to a contrast colour (cc) stitch knit with that colour instead. Just hang it behind the work when not in use, don't cut. BUT after you've knitted about 4 stitches in main colour, just cross the strands over to keep your cc twisted in at the back so you don't have big strands hanging down. It won't show at the front. Hope this makes sense.

Working in the round probably helps, as one of the problems of working with two colours back and forth is you can end up with the other colour being at the 'wrong' end of the row when you need it again :)

The important thing as tiggy says is to make sure the yarn you're carrying behind the work isn't too loose or (particularly) too tight.

I do my fairisle knitting - this really isn't very difficult to learn but I wouldn't try and learn it on a small diameter item like a little hat. The aim should be for the main colour to float above the contrast colour - this is how you get the very straight and tidy back of a fairisle fabric like in the pic in this article. However, this is NOT something you need to achieve straight away!

If the pattern calls for big blocks of colour rather than a repeating device like fairisle, you should be creating small balls of yarn for each block of colour (known as intarsia and/or a right royal pain in the arse).

If you can link to the pattern we can sort you out.

Yay. Followed your advice and so far so good. Pattern isn't too complicated. Figured I'd better start simple!

Wow tribpot! That pic was super neat knitting! I thought i could do intarsia, no problem, but mines nowhere near as tight as that!

Intarsia won't look quite like that on the back, tiggy - because you don't carry one strand of yarn behind the other.

It's not too difficult to learn to keep your fairisle that neat on the back, but it requires a bit of planning :)

Sorry i meant fairisle. It's the only type i do. Never attempted intarsia.

Snap, Tiggy. On several counts. I never do intarsia. I do Fair Isle with the thread in each hand, backgound colour in the right hand and contrast (which is always a bit looser) in the left. My Fair Isle is as nice on the back as on the front, honest.