QWERTY Mum: Illusions

Thursday 4 October 2012

Illusions

We recently acquired one of those giant foam glove things that you use to wave in a crowd. It came from a friend who had ventured down to London to see the Olympic parade that marked the end of a fantastic summer of sport and patriotism. Undoubtedly there would have been a lot of waving in a lot of crowds! It was in the shape of the National Lottery symbol and my little girl has adopted it and has it in her bed with her. She call it Toodles.

The focus of this post is not about the weird and wonderful things children attach to. It is more about a way of seeing things.

I remember when the National Lottery launched. I remember buying my very first ticket for the very first draw and my complete belief that I could win. I remember lying in a hot bath (not really relevant but sets the scene I suppose) fantasising about how I was going to spend my millions. I entered religiously every week up until the time that the Wednesday draw was introduced (two draws a week seemed excessive and I lost interest). I never won anything. I do still buy the occasional ticket when I remember or I'm feeling particularly lucky and I still fantasise about spending my millions.

In all the time that the National Lottery has been present in my life, I have only ever seen the symbol as crossed fingers. When my daughter started talking about the National Lottery 'whale' (in reference to the foam glove thing that accompanies my little one to bed) I had no idea what she was meant. I'm still not sure if it is supposed to be a whale or a fish but I can definitely see some sort of fish-like character looking at me from eyes that I only ever saw as fingers. I don't know how I never saw it before.

My daughter Charis always surprises me with her way of looking at things. Although never formally diagnosed, she has always exhibit characteristics associated with Asperger's Syndrome. I read on a T Shirt recently - Autism: It's not a processing error, it's a different operating system. This perfectly describes my daughter and I'm not too embarrassed to be educated by slogans on casual wear.

Charis does see things differently. From a young age, she puzzled us all when she talked about the road sign with a chair on it. It transpired the road the road sign was actually the one warning of a slippery road and to this day she insists it is not a skidding car - it is a chair.

If (like me) you are struggling to see it, the car part of the image is the back of the chair, the white space between the two skid lines above the crossover is the seat and the two black lines below the crossover are the two rather wobbly chair legs.

I do love optical illusions. I recently came across a knitting technique called Illusion Knitting and I really wanted to have a go. It is quite simple - using different combinations of plain and purl stitch to create raised areas that when viewed from a certain angle create an illusion of a pattern that cannot be seen when looking directly. The pattern I used was this Piano Scarf. I knew I wouldn't have the patience/time to knit a whole scarf so I adapted the pattern to make another 5x5 square for my patchwork blanket project. I admit the illusion of a piano keyboard would look a lot better as a scarf but I was quite pleased with the taster that my blanket square gave me for this technique. You can almost see the piano keys!