if you want to feel like you have been granted eternal life, make this. i felt like it was never going to end. no, i didn't enjoy it. and yes, i might have learned from the two times i started it and ripped it all out. but i really wanted to finish.
let's take a closer look. as reported earlier, you do not see the secret image of the shroud of turin from the side, but instead from the chin -- which means you have to be far away, and under Him. (this is the reason, in part, i put the little i-cord loops at the top, thinking it might be hung on the wall, fairly high up, to better advantage.)


hmmm. i'm sorry to report that i was having an easier time seeing the image in my previous green-and-pink lopi incarnations of this piece. but heavens, at least now this is in cotton and can be used for something. perhaps it can line a basket of baked goods. the laying on of breadsticks.

i am not good at making nice neat backs when carrying a lot of floats, and this looked really wretched. so i put a backing on it, with a cute towel i found at williams-sonoma. in a hip and updated take on the "fisher of men" concept, we have here a "bouquet" of shrimp, with female names.

ben, being adorable and jewish, exclaimed when he saw the finished piece: "now you'll definitely get into heaven!" well, he is the guy who asked (seriously) "why the virgin mary couldn't fly"...

it's finished. next!

and then i said unto myself, "it's driving me crazy. i have to make it. and look, now there's a cute animated button to go with it."

and lo i said more untomyself: "maybe it could be a dishtowel. out of that 'kitchen cotton' stuff that sounds so trailer trash. i've always wanted to try it."

and then thought bilously untomyself, "i could give it to someone in ben's family... for hanukkah."

and it was back on.

i had to get some stuff called, what is it, sugar and creme? the red is pretty punk rock, and the ecru is nice and speckly.

third time's a charm?

i don't believe He brought me this far to leave me.

can you see Him?

using annie's chart for the shroud of turin, knit using the illusion knitting method, i have learned one thing for sure: the illusion method is a one-trick pony that i don't think will be interesting me again anytime soon. (nothing anyone can take personally, mind you.) from what i read about it, it is often used in machine knitting, which is not my bag.

i have ripped out to the start twice on jesus so far, sort of attracted/repulsed by my efforts. i think started out knitting too loose. also, before i realized that illusion knitting was "supposed" to look just like plain stripes (it didn't, and mine doesn't), i added a third color to the mix -- where color "A" would be purled on WS rows, i now have a third color. it doesn't seem to harm the illuuuusion, but it also makes it look as though you are looking at SOMETHING (a relief map?) rather than just really f***ed up stripes when you are just up next to the thing.

it's also very elongated. the other examples i saw of illusion knitting created vertical stripes, not horizontal ones, like this chart does. (again, no one's fault -- what can you do?) but i do realize that i will, if i finish this (and i am on the fence about it), have a long stringy nebulous Prince of Peace on a piece of knitting that will be, in shape, useful for nothing. here he is in all his unblocked Glory.

maybe i will apply panels to either side of it and make a triptych. at least then it will be sort of pillow-sized. i have wanted to try mitered squares -- maybe i can just attach some along the sides of this piece.

i have read that jesus really liked swiss chard, so i will possibly back the pillow with this fabric. can you guess who makes it?

update: yeah, i have begun to see the issue here. if i'm wrong i hope someone will correct me. but the reason most illusion knitting reveals its "illusion" image when viewed from the SIDE appears to be because the ridges created in the knitting of it run VERTICALLY. in the case of the shroud of turin, the ridges run horizontally across the image -- therefore, you're best going to see it when viewed from underneath or above (underneath works best if you want to see it right side up.)
where a sweater or pillow or other knitwork can easily -- and even accidentally -- be viewed from the side to reveal it's illusion image, it takes some work to get to the FOOT of a piece of knitting and peer upwards. that seems to be what will have to happen to view the shroud's image. if anyone was thinking of making a sweater out of it, or a tank top, they will have people on their knees before them, literally, trying to see Christ.

further update: i have ripped it all out. cool idea, but i'll have to be counted out on this one. i hope to see what other people come up with!

shut up, shuler.

a little too cool for cats, if you ask me. still, this entry could be the charter entry in my "mistakes" category...

this is again a blatant violation of the "year of selfish knitting". or is it? shuler and zooey are "my" cats, albeit noncustodial. and shuler turned ten this month, which means zooey is not far behind (although we don't know his actual birthday). so, using MORE than all of my feltable stash -- which included a large quantity of manos left over from the proust boots, some mountain mohair, various bits of noro, and some really crappy merino that i "spun", i got busy on this somewhat tweaked pattern from a knitlist archive.

it's important to say here that there was nothing about the pattern, or the picture that went with it, that indicated in any hard, fast way that the fulled cat basket would have sides that were at all vertical. did i do anything in my knitting to ensure that my basket would have vertical sides? no. did i just hope my basket would have vertical sides? yes.

i also didn't do exactly what the pattern said to do. nor did i use all the same yarn on the sides as i did on the bottom. i could go on here. but it's for cats. they don't even have color vision. they think sleeping in a cardboard box is okay.

so now they have a nice new warped disc with a bite out of it to sleep on, probably made out of eighty dollars worth of yarn and two weeks of my knitting life. i'm moving on. the funny thing is, i like this thing! i hope shules and zoo will, too.