Shadow Knitting - Illusion or Reality?

Ok, cheesy title. I know. Because I have a few knitting friends whom I can't help but copy nearly everything they do (knitting and otherwise) I determined to give illusion knitting a try. The particular friend who most recently brought this cool technique to mind does not have a knitting blog but her mom and sister do. A while back her sister knit a really cool scarf. While I admired it greatly, I did not think I could ever pull off such a knitting feat. This was, after all, almost a year ago (can I say that when it was actually only 10 months ago?). I am much less knitting timid with all the practice I've had this year.

So recently when this friend started talking about doing some illusion knitting of her own ... well. It got the better of me and I decided to see if I could figure it out.

Now I really don't learn well by reading. It makes little to no sense to me. Knowing this about myself I picked a simple heart cloth (pdf) with written instructions (the charts brought on nothing but stress and confusion). It only took a few hours to knit this and the girls and I are really pleased with how it turned out. Even my husband was impressed!

I decided to use some very old fingering weight acrylic and give it to my daughter to be used as a blanket for her little tiny dolls. It was a lot easier than I imagined and now that I have got the hang of it, I think I may be ready to make up my own shadow knitting pattern! What shall I knit? ...