Magic Knitting

Please excuse the badly-lit iPhone photos. I was sitting in bed when I took these just moments after I finished this clever little piece of knitting and I had to share it with someone right away. So I took a couple of quick snaps and posted them to Facebook. Then the next day I took it to work and I've had it on my desk ever since so haven't been able to get any better photos.

Do you see it?

How about now?
This is done using a particularly clever technique known as illusion knitting. I stumbled across it in a forum on Ravelry the other week and became fascinated looking at some of the clever, not to mention artistic, things that people had knitted this way.

I decided that I wanted to try it myself, but not wanting to commit to a big or expensive pattern I chose a little free chart to see how it worked out. And it was incredible. I got it finished within a couple of days and decided against making it any longer so that I could pin it to my desk at work. It makes me smile whenever I move around the room and look back at it because like a hologram I can see the image appearing and disappearing.

It looks like it is really complicated to do but it's actually really simple, relying on contrasting colours, and knit rows with purled stitches to make the raised areas of the image. When it's looked at from head on you just see the stripes, then when it's laid down flat and you look at it from the right angle the image appears.

The one thing I would change if I did this again is that I misinterpreted the chart's directions for main colour and contrast colour. I think it would've looked a little better if the paw print was in dark blue and the background in yellow, just to make it pop out a bit more. But at least now I know how this works I can definitely justify investing the time and money in making an actual wall-hanging.