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Description
*Update*
I've added the chart for this illusion to my scraps, here , along with some more general tips on illusion knitting and on this pattern in general. Please share if you use this pattern or are inspired by it! (And of course, please credit me if you use the pattern. )

So this is a project I've been planning since sometime last spring, when these wonderful tulips bloomed again in the garden, which coincided with my seeing a picture of something called illusion or shadow knitting. Of course I had to try it, and the tulips seemed like an excellent subject.

Illusion knitting is, as you can see, a technique in which you pick two colors and knit stripes of them in such a way that, from the front, only the stripes appear, while from an angle a picture forms from the stripes that are visible. It's extremely easy to do--just knit two rows of each color, the first row always knitted, and in the second row, knit if you want that color to appear and purl otherwise (a grid helps to chart out the image and figure out which stitches to knit or purl). From the right side the purl bumps form the image.

A couple of things I've learned while experimenting for this project:
• You can (as you can see) use more than one color, but it helps to have one color that is always the background, and only vary the foreground color (or vice versa). Otherwise the illusion doesn't work as well.
• On the second row of each color (the row that actually creates the illusion) a single purl stitch or a single knit stitch won't show up right. You need at least two knits and two purls in a row in order for the purl bump to stick out and the knit to be hidden.

This was knitted with Caron Simply Soft yarn and took about three days, several hours each. I decided to make it into a pillow so that I could use the other side for another illusion idea I'd had, also involving a tulip, which you can see here !

Description
*Update*
I've added the chart for this illusion to my scraps, here , along with some more general tips on illusion knitting and on this pattern in general. Please share if you use this pattern or are inspired by it! (And of course, please credit me if you use the pattern. )

So this is a project I've been planning since sometime last spring, when these wonderful tulips bloomed again in the garden, which coincided with my seeing a picture of something called illusion or shadow knitting. Of course I had to try it, and the tulips seemed like an excellent subject.

Illusion knitting is, as you can see, a technique in which you pick two colors and knit stripes of them in such a way that, from the front, only the stripes appear, while from an angle a picture forms from the stripes that are visible. It's extremely easy to do--just knit two rows of each color, the first row always knitted, and in the second row, knit if you want that color to appear and purl otherwise (a grid helps to chart out the image and figure out which stitches to knit or purl). From the right side the purl bumps form the image.

A couple of things I've learned while experimenting for this project:
• You can (as you can see) use more than one color, but it helps to have one color that is always the background, and only vary the foreground color (or vice versa). Otherwise the illusion doesn't work as well.
• On the second row of each color (the row that actually creates the illusion) a single purl stitch or a single knit stitch won't show up right. You need at least two knits and two purls in a row in order for the purl bump to stick out and the knit to be hidden.

This was knitted with Caron Simply Soft yarn and took about three days, several hours each. I decided to make it into a pillow so that I could use the other side for another illusion idea I'd had, also involving a tulip, which you can see here !