Stitchboard Admin message #2
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
December 11, 2015 at 6:37:42 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #1)
 
Silvertiger,

Illusion knitting works best when you have an image with a lot of contrast.  If you look at some of the images of illusion knitting that are online, you'll see the stitch patterns are also elongated, which is part of the illusion.  Your pattern is produced by purling certain stitches, which, along with the piece being elongated, gives the eye the illusion of certain rows appearing prominently, and that makes your design.

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Stitchboard Admin message #4
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
December 12, 2015 at 4:49:37 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #3)
 
Silvertiger,

It's formulaic...kind of like this...let's say you have black and red, a very striking color combo.  We'll call black the background, red the foreground color.  Since you're talking about a name, I'll keep this simple and the example will be a capital letter "T," sans serif.  I'll talk as if the pattern has the illusion starting in the "first" row. 

Row 1:
So with black, you'll start on the first row, which is plain knitting.  You'll cast on the required number of stitches, so say you have 8 stitches in every row.  You'll knit those 8 stitches.

Row 2:
Staying with black, you'll work in your pattern.  You'll knit the background, purl the foreground.  In this case, let's say we're starting at the bottom of the letter "T," so all you have is a small base, 3 stitches which you'll knit, 2 stitches for the actual pattern (purl), then another 3 stitches you'll knit.

Row 3:
Switch color to red.  Important: don't cut either color.  The easiest thing to do is to carry the colors up along the side of the work when not in use.
With red, knit across.

Row 4:
Staying with red, you'll do exactly the opposite of what you did in row 2 - you'll purl the knit stitches and knit the purl stitches.  That means in row 4, you'll have 3 purl stitches, 2 knit stitches, 3 purl stitches.

All four of these rows are really the same row in illusion knitting.  So even though I've called them 1-4, they're really all row 1.  And since it's easier for us to follow the numbers as they go in a logical order, it's usually best to write out an illusion knitting pattern so it looks pretty conventional.  But in the case of illusion, you'd multiply the normal number of rows by 4.  So if your pattern happened to be 8 stitches high, you'd really end up knitting 8 x 4, or 32 rows for illusion.

Hope this has been helpful.    As you can see, the instructions involve only knits and purls, so it's very basic, nothing complex. 

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Stitchboard Admin message #6
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
December 13, 2015 at 1:21:40 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #5)
 
Silvertiger,

Super!    Looking forward to seeing what you accomplish. 

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Stitchboard Admin message #8
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
December 14, 2015 at 4:34:03 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #7)
 
Silvertiger,

Due to the limited size (I'm sure you didn't upload it that way...that's likely a limitation of the software, sigh) I'm not entirely positive about what I'm looking at, so I don't want to steer you the wrong way.  What you need for each row is four rows.  Row one is knit with the "background" color.  Row two has you purling your letters (the entire row still in the background color), knitting what will be the background (or main color) of the row.  Row three is picking up the new (foreground) color, knitting one row with it.  Row four is where you do the opposite of what you did in row two...purl the knit stitches and knit the purl stitches - except in your foreground or contrasting color. 

This same procedure goes for everything in the pattern...knitting first and third rows, changing colors every two rows.  I know it sounds more complex than it is, and if you're like I am, you probably get quite confused reading a pattern or looking at a chart, not being able to picture what's going on.

Something you may want to do...with small amounts of yarn, why not try one letter?  If you only do one letter as a test, it may become much clearer.  LOL, it's like I told one of my friends about reading knitting patterns beforehand - you know, as we're supposed to do, argh - I can't make head or tail out of them until I sit down and at least try it. 

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Stitchboard Admin message #10
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
December 15, 2015 at 2:15:08 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #9)
 
Silvertiger,

There's a way you can enlarge a picture here...if you choose the "image" button, then once it's loaded, click on the image and you'll have spots around the image where you can "pull" on them to enlarge; however, if it's a jpg, it may be at maximum resolution anyway, in which case making it larger will only blur it.    Doesn't hurt to try, though! 

I think a word chart is probably better than a graph in this case...I personally would find it confusing to have to remember which row/color was knit/purl and which was purl/knit!  Of course, it's not easy to just sit down and write those instructions. 

This may not be an option for you, though I'll say it because it could help and you may want to try this.  You could sign up for the freePatternWizard's Illusion Knitting feature (it's a premier feature, though, so it's not part of the free program).  If you can make up the letters with a fairly small font, one you can save in a very small number of pixels and (if you have the ability) save it out as a png or gif file, running it through the freePatternWizard would give you the choice of word chart or graph.  And if you could make the file small enough, you could do it on a 1:1 basis (e.g., one stitch per pixel).  What wouldn't work is to reduce it through the freePatternWizard, as it's not really a graphics program and would end up making the image unrecognizable.

If you want to see what it looks like, there's a sample of what a word chart and a graph would look like, right here in the community; there's also a pattern one of our members created with numbers, so you can get an idea of how something like that looks.  That's in these messages here:
/community/2.0/message.php?t=1063&c=34&b=236

Take a look at the pattern...I find the word charts so much easier to follow.  You could also make yours a bit smaller than Kim did in her pattern.  Just remember that whatever the length of your piece, the actual number of rows will be 4x as many, in order to work as an illusion knitting pattern. 

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Stitchboard Admin message #12
Re: Illusion knitting "A.K.A" Shadow knitting
January 11, 2016 at 4:12:33 AM  (in response to Silvertiger message #11)
 
Silvertiger,

You're very welcome! 

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