When I last posted, I was in rural Alaska without my knitting. It occurs to me now that I did not mention that I was heading out to rural AK, so readers of the previous post may have been thinking – “So what? Go to a yarn shop and get stuff for another project.!” If you have been in rural Alaska, you know what the big deal was.  For the most part, there are no yarn shops in rural Alaska.  At all.

However, once I got to my destination, I remembered that the AC stores sometimes will have a bit of a craft section, so possibly not all was lost.  And this one did.  Here it is…

in all of its glorious splendor! Also there were some Boye knitting needles on the side that you see here.

Well.  I bought two skeins of cotton yarn, and some size 7 aluminum needles, and went back to my hotel room to see what could be done with them.  As it turns out, making washcloths is kind of restful.  Not what I was planning to get done this week, but still, now I have a nice washcloth, and also another project.

Ta Da!  The other project is a nifty little shadow/illusion knitting project I found on Ravelry, Heart2 Heart. I have been meaning to try out shadow knitting for a while now, and this gave me the chance.  For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, shadow knitting is where you use a clever combination of knit/purl texturing and color stripes of yarn to knit a picture in your project that appears or disappears depending on the angle from which you are looking at it.

Specifically, here is my little stripy cloth from straight on…

And you can kind of see the heart, but not really.  (I’ve seen projects where you don’t really see the image at all – I’m not done experimenting with this technique, not at all!)

And here it is from an angle!  If you likewise think this is a neat trick, poke around on Ravelry, and you will find all kinds of nifty projects to try.  I know I certainly will be, right after the Year of Colorwork is over.

Finally, after I got home, here’s what I saw…

Forgotten project.  Oh well, I have another trip coming up in a couple of weeks.  And I know what project I’m bringing with me!