Illusion knitting is a crazy thing. Look at it head-on, and it just looks like boring stripes. Stripes are cool for *some*, but just too plain for others.
BUT....if you take a step back, so you're looking at the piece at an angle, something amazing happens! A subtle image begins to emerge! The tighter the angle you view the piece at, the more visible the image becomes.

I wanted to incorporate the logo of my favorite "band", Nine Inch Nails into a knitted piece, but I didn't want it to be blatant. I figured Illusion Knitting would be perfect, and that a scarf would be something that would look OK in stripes. But a scarf is long, and the NIN box is short. What to do? Well, NIN's latest record, Year Zero, came with a huge and involved back-story set in the future, where everything has all gone to crap and suddenly people start seeing "The Presence" - a huge hand reaching down from the sky and planting it's fingers in the ground. All who see it are struck with terror and an overwhelming sense of contrition. Sounded like a cool enough motif to work with!

I have to say, this scarf turned out even better than I imagined it would. Making the grid was a bit difficult, but once I got the proportions right, execution was VERY simple. I think this is my best knitting work to date.

The pattern is available for free to anyone who wants to use it - http://fernandfaerie.com/thepresence.pdf