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I wanted to understand illusion knitting for a long time. I never thought that my first attempt at it would be to design an illusion pattern, but I wanted something really special for a knitting friend for Christmas. After some trial and error, I was really happy with the final result.
The scarf is my own design. It took a while to figure out how to design illusions, though. Some of my first attempts were amusing. I started with the "HO HO HO" panel. The design takes shape on the wrong side of the work, therefore, I was thinking that I had to reverse the letters to make it come out right on the public side - WRONG. My first attempt actually said "OH OH OH". Frog it... On the Christmas tree panel, the tree ended up being VERY skinny and VERY tall. Ok - frog it.
Once I got the pattern to look right, I thought it was smooth sailing - WRONG AGAIN. If you don't reverse the design at the middle of the neck for the 2nd side, the scarf ends up with all the panels going the same direction, therefore, when worn, one side will be upside-down. Frog it...
I'm in the process of designing several other illusion patterns. If you are interested in purchasing this pattern or any other illusion patterns, please email me at nancy@3rdm.net.
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This bag was a test knitting project for a friend. She designed the pattern and I wanted to use some more vibrant colors than the muted tones she had used on her prototype. I started dying wool for this project. I love the result I got with the Wilton cake dyes. The green, blue and yellow are cake dyes. The red was some red wool I had left over from another project. I just couldn't dye wool to make the red turn out. I got a wide range of pinks and purples, but no red, so I used Lamb's Pride instead.
This bag was a lot of fun to make. I really love the decreases on the bottom. I really enjoyed the chance to practice "knitting backwards" so I didn't have to turn my work every time I needed to purl. Entrelac can drive you crazy if you don't learn to knit backwards.
