Here’s the recipe for a rather nifty illusion. Mix almost equal parts of two DK weight contrasting colors. I used Plymouth Select DK Merino Superwash, in an olive green and a natural shade.
The rest of the recipe is just to knit and purl for a good long while, using the illusion technique of alternating the colors every two rows.
Wooly Thoughts, a/k/a Steve Plummer and Pat Ashforth, chart only the wrong side rows. But, no need to flip out even if you are chart-impaired because every stitch on every right side row is a knit stitch. And every white square is a purl. Even I can remember that…and I am easily confused by charts. I’m one of those folks who can’t make the symbol transition, typically, in charts that are knit flat rather than in the round. I have a lot of trouble training my brain that a dot on a right side row is a purl but a dot on a wrong side row is a knit. By contrast, illusion knitting charts are very easy to work with.
Bottom line. You will not find this difficult. At least not if you stick to the Wooly Thoughts patterns. I’ve done other illusions where the charting was less straightforward. The designers are correct when they say that “if you can knit, purl, and count, you can do this.”
As you knit, the illusion appears–but it only clearly appears when you look at it from the side.
Otherwise, what you see looks a bit like messy garter stitch, but with stockinette in between the ridges. This illusion is also interesting because the background color shifts near the mid-point of the blanket.
It’s tough knitting to photograph though. It turned out to be a wonderful lightweight blanket and will work well even as a carseat blanket.
Here’s another Wooly Thoughts pattern I completed: the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Illusion Shawl.
