This was a fun project, made possible by what I learned from Double or Nothing and Illusion Knitting.

Sockmatician’s tutorials on the Invisible Double-Knitting cast-on and one-needle bind-off were also a great help.

I had done double-knitted stripes before, as well as non-mirror-image double-knitted colorwork. But I had never done double-knitted illusion knitting. Moreover, it wasn’t until I began knitting that I realized that because this isn’t completely a mirror image, I would need to learn to do KK and PP pairs of stitches as well as the usual KP and textured PK pairs. (Now that I have some practice under my belt, if I ever use these techniques together again, I’ll make the project a pillow rather than something to hang, because the inside can be kept completely hollow if you don’t link the yarns anywhere but the edges. Because I was making this to hang, every 10 rows or so, I linked a pair of stitches 10 stitches from what would end up the top of the piece. I kept the cast-on and bind-off separated by color on the 10 top-most stitches so that I could run a dowel through.)

It was really fun to try the design using Lego software first. Thank you, George Maffett and Woolly Thoughts!

I charted this using the method pioneered by Woolly Thoughts. It’s a simple design, so I used Excel (the MOD function used with Conditional Formatting can make getting red lines every 10 stitches and every 10 rows automatic. ;) Because it’s double-knitted, I numbered the stitches from right to left and used the following legend, which incorporates double-knitting but not the fact that it’s not a mirror image. I just kept that straight in my head by following the chart bottom to top and top to bottom at the same time. (Thanks again to Woolly Thoughts for inspiring me to annotate a pattern PDF with “rulers” to track my progress--if you’re using a Windows PC or tablet, I highly recommend the Drawboard PDF app.)

The legend I used for double-knitting an Illusion chart:

Each row in the chart represents a Side B Ridge. Each square represents a pair of DK stitches. If the stitches on the edges are important to the design, add a selvedge pair of stitches to both ends.

For each ridge†:

Side A‡

On a charted Light ridge (where the non-white squares are gray):
K1D byib, P1L byif until there are 2 stitches left, sl1p byib, sl1p byif.

On a charted Dark ridge (where the non-white squares are black):
K1L byib, P1D byif until there are 2 stitches left, sl1p byib, sl1p byif.

Side B
1) Follow chart right to left (note that for non-double-knitting you would follow it left to right, so this is different) until last 2 stitches (and if you’re using a selvedge work the first 2 as a normal DK pair):

On a Light ridge (where the non-white squares are gray):
Gray: with dyib and lyif, P1L, K1D
White: K1L byib, P1D byif

On a Dark ridge (where the non-white squares are black):
Black: with lyib and dyif, P1D, K1L
White: K1D byib, P1L byif

2) sl1p byib, sl1p byif.

K1L = knit one with light yarn
K1D = knit one with dark yarn
P1L = purl one with light yarn
P1D = purl one with dark yarn

sl1p = slip one purlwise

byib = both yarns in back
byif = both yarns in front
lyib = light yarn in back
dyif = dark yarn in front
dyib = dark yarn in back
lyif = light yarn in front

†Work the last two stitches on the last row of the first ridge, and the last row of the last ridge, instead of slipping them.

‡The cast on is the Side A first row of the first ridge, so skip this the first time.