Dalek Illusion Knit

My friend and I, when we were 12, developed a joint crush on Jamie McCrimmon in Dr Who, aka Frazer Hines. A week before my 13th birthday, it was my friend’s 13th birthday and her grandfather managed to arrange for us to go to a Dr Who rehearsal, where we met the Dr Who actors - Patrick Troughton (Dr Who), Wendy Padbury (Zoe) and of course Frazer Hines (Jamie). Meeting Frazer Hines in person killed the crush for me. Well, it was really Jamie I liked, who is obviously not a real person, whereas Frazer Hines definitely is. He seemed like a nice person, but was definitely not actually Jamie!

In honour of that long-ago day, and because I have fancied doing an illusion knit (see note below) for some time, I decided to do the illusion Dalek for her for the Facebook 2013 Crafty Pass it on thingummy.

There were no Daleks in the episode we saw the rehearsal of, but as one knitting friend said, it is symbolic.

This one is knitted in DK acrylic, but it could be done in other materials and thicknesses of yarn, which would obviously change the size. I used black and grey from my stash, so still on yarn diet!

I did think of making it as a wall hanging, but then to see the effect properly, you would have to be looking at it from below or above, not directly at it. So I decided against that and made it a kind of runner instead by putting a fringe on each end.

The top photo shows the effect when seen at an angle. The picture is supposed to disappear when viewed straight on as in the left smaller photo. It pretty much did in real life, so I guess the camera can lie a bit! The right hand small photo is what is looks like on the reverse.

(1) Illusion knitting: In case you are interested in how this is done, I was going to try to explain it but thought it best to direct you to Woolly Thoughts website, as it is explained far better there than I could do - and you can explore the rest of the website, if you fancy doing an illusion knit yourself, or just for interest.

http://www.illusionknitting.woollythoughts.com/introduction.html

Winter Sky Wingspan

Quick - get in a post before February has gone!

My DD received from Secret Santa the Wingspan pattern and some white and grey yarn with sequins to make it with. She made it and called it "Winter is come" (as a sort of quote from Game of Thrones) as the yarn looks like clouds and snow and the sequins are the sparkly bits in the snow (when there is enough sunlight to make them sparkle!). I looked at this and remembered I had bought some similar-coloured yarn (no sequins) a few years back, intending to make a hat for DS's then girlfriend, but then had made the hat out of a plainer grey yarn (pic under Hats - May 2011). They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, whatever, I decided I'd do one too and as the yarn is sort of winter sky colours I decided to call it Winter Sky Wingspan. Mine is two triangles shorter than DD's, so a bit short for an adult, but would be fine for a girl.

[In original post: And at this point I was going to put in a picture, but the facility for uploading a photo from one's computer has disappeared. This happened before when I was using Internet Explorer, but then DD suggested going back to Google Chrome, as this is a Google blog, which seemed to make sense and indeed, yes, there was the facility. Now it seems to have disappeared even when using Chrome. So, I'm going off in a little huff now and will come back sometime and see if it has become possible again and if so, edit this post.]

Added on 9 March 2013: and now it seems to be possible add a photo again, although the method seems to be slightly different. Why do they have to keep changing things?