Intarsia is the term used to identify a knitting project using blocks of color where the yarn is not stranded or carried across the back of the work as is done in Fair Isle knitting.
Intarsia is not any more difficult than straight knitting, at least in it's most basic form. It requires small balls or bobbins of yarn be used for each block of color.
When you get to the end of working with one color in the row you are on, you simply drop the color you were using and pick up the next color. Always pick up the new yarn from underneath the old yarn to prevent holes in your project.
Intarsia gives a cleaner and less bulky look to the back of projects knitted in this manner. The main potential difficulty with this type of knitting is getting your yarns tangled; using bobbins can help prevent this because the bobbins prevent too much yarn from being loose at any given time.
An easy intarsia project is a color block pillow. This project uses only three colors and the sections for each color are rather large. At most you will only need five balls of yarn at a time, which sounds like a lot but is really quite manageable.
