The dark side of intarsia

Never, ever tell someone you're knitting something for them. Why? Because they'll make requests.

I told my nephew who's a freshman at Wake Forest that I was going to knit a scarf in his college colors for him. He was thrilled. Then he said, "Can you put a 'WF' on the scarf?"

Being a good aunt, I said, "Sure!" Then he said, "Cool. Can you put my initials on the scarf?"

What was I supposed to say?

So now I'm stuck with intarsia, those annoying color changes mid-row that require lots of dangling little knots of yarn and lots of weaving in of ends. I have to say that I really enjoy working out the pattern on graph paper; it's one of those processes that appeals to the engineer's side of my brain (which I inherited from my father).

And I have to say it looks pretty snazzy on the front:

However, here's the Dark Side of intarsia:

It's enough to give you nightmares, isn't it? The worst part is that with a scarf it will show as the ends get flipped around. So I'm going to have to really make it look neat and tidy when I tuck all the ends in. Ugh!

Here's what I've knitted so far. It's a modification of a pattern in ScarfStyle (my Bible of scarves).

I like it because the stockinette stitch and ribbing switches back and forth between sides, making the "flipping" issue moot (except for the #$%#@#&@* intarsia!).

Any helpful hints about keeping one's sanity while knitting intarsia would be most welcome! Anyone? Anyone?