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<\/p>\nIllusion Knitting. Shadow Knitting. Hocus Pocus? Nope. It’s a way of knitting that creates a pattern in your work that seems to be there one minute and gone the next. If you’ve never seen it before, read on, and\/or start googling. There are some fantastic examples of what you can do with shadow knitting. It’s achieved by alternating between purl and knit stitches in your work. Yeah, I know, that’s how all knitting is. True, but this particular technique uses rows of knit stitches to create ridges, and then you alternate your stitches in the in-between rows to cause some of the stitches to pop-out or appear when viewed at a certain angle. Oh yeah, it uses two colors too! Have a look at this example …<\/p>\n
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This isn’t knit, just an example using dashes to show what I mean. Imagine the — as knit stitches on the wrong side of the work and ___ as purl stitches. Now glance at it from a few different angles. Do you see the words? Excellent. The same effect can be done with actual knit and purl stitches and two contrasting colors of yarn. Actually, since it’s the combination of purl and knit stitches that creates the ridges and valleys, you can actually do this with the same color yarn as well, but it is more dramatic with two contrasting colors. Shadow knitting has been around for quite some time now, but has become more popular as of late. There is a great book that as been out for ages that describes the process and also has several projects in it called Shadow Knitting by Vivian Hoxbro. In the book she goes through the origin of Shadow Knitting and describes in detail how the patterns are created. Here is a video I found on You Tube showing an example of shadow knitting.<\/p>\n