Hellllppp

I'm not sure how I missed this before.

This is a REALLY COMPLICATED SWEATER.

I swatched, I measured, I re-calculated for my small size and a plain boxy hem rather than the shirt-tail style in the original. Excited to finally start this big warm woolly sweater, I cast on for the back and did a little garter-stitch edging. And then I got to the first row of colorwork.

Here's the part where I beg the internet for advice. What is this thing? Is the colorwork all intarsia? Or are there bits of intarsia alternating with some sort of stranded work with the white background color? (In case you can't tell, there are 4 colors plus the white: brick red, pink, lavender, and dark purple.) Further complicating matters, I've never done intarsia. Am I completely insane to even try this? I've already modified the color pattern to make it narrower and slightly less elaborate; should I just chuck it and design something that only requires two colors per row? Oh, and in case I thought the original pattern would help, um, it appears to be written for the more advanced knitter, because it just says "Begin working pattern 1 with right side facing" where pattern 1 is a hand-drawn chart. This is what I get for buying patterns in remote corners of Scotland.

Thank you all in advance for any help... I love this yarn and am looking forward to the fancy cables, and what you can't see is that there's a small cable running all down the sleeve, which looks supremely cool, and the collar has a multi-colored lining. It's gorgeous - I just wish I knew how to knit it.