The design on this shawl will only be of interest to the ladies of Amersham A Cappella, as it was created especially for them. However, the striped fringe is not something I usually add to my shawls so that feature might be useful to others.

Amersham A Cappella are a ladies close-harmony chorus who have been British Champions several times and are currently International Gold Medallists and European Silver Medallists. In May 2019 they got together with The Cottontown Chorus (the chorus I sing with), who have been men’s British Champions several times, and are currently European Bronze Medallists. These two choruses, from different parts of the country, combined to form a mixed chorus with 106 members and became Mixed Chorus British Champions at their first outing.

Amersham’s Musical Director is a great Queen fan and decided to call this new chorus A Kind of Magic. Illusion knitting seems like magic so it seemed appropriate to make a shawl incorporating the name.

The two songs that won the competition were in strict four-part harmony. We have sung with the ladies previously, in a non-competitive show, when we sang in eight-part harmony. On that occasion one of the songs we sang was It’s a Kind of Magic. I have used a recording of a practice for that event as the soundtrack for a video showing how the illusion appears and disappears.

I used Amersham’s own logo to create the illusion. It is difficult to use fancy lettering as it has to be quite big to be able to include all the details. Plain block lettering (like the part that says A Kind of Magic) is much easier.