This scarf began as traditional stranded colorwork and morphed into shadow knitting (also known as illusion knitting). I found shadow knitting showed off the design concept and gradated yarn much better than my original stranded version. It also makes for simpler knitting because you don’t need to “float” yarns in the back of the work.

This is a great project to use up stash yarn, because you only need a few hundred yards of each color. I used stash yarn for the dark color, but I recommend Ewe Ewe Wooly Worsted or Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. To get the color effect, you will also need a gradated yarn - I used Freia Fine Handpaints Sport Ombre.

I recommend choosing colors with high contrast and knitting a test swatch to make sure your gauge is tight enough for the illusion to reveal itself.