Wheee!

My sis just sent me a bunch of photos of my niece posing with the baby blanket I made her. Wheee!


Thanks, Abbie! SO happy!

The big baby blanket post is here, and the pattern is available here.

Hyperbolic Knitting (Fuzzy Math)

Inspired by the forms of the crochet coral reef but prefer sticks to hooks? Here are 2 experiments in hyperbolic knitting.

Both of these shapes are made using the same basic pattern. If you can knit in the round and work an increase, you can do this, too. Here's how to play along:

Pick a number of stitches to cast on.
Pick another number, which we'll call (X).

Using double-pointed needles, cast on to work in the round (start out as for i-cord and add more needles as you need them)

k(X), increase 1, k(X), increase 1 , k(X), increase 1...

That's it! Bind off when you feel like stopping or you run low on yarn or needle-space. Since this is an exponential form, each round will ruffle more than the last and use more and more yarn.

The smaller the number you choose for (X), the sooner and sharper your form will ruffle. The bigger (X) is, the skinnier your form will be.

In each of these models, I cast on 4 stitches. For the tall skinny one, (X) is 15. For the fat one, it's 5.

I used yarn-overs for the increases because I wanted the random-ish pattern that the increases make to be visible. Using kfb or a lifted increase will be less visible and will make the ruffling more pronounced.

Have fun with it!

Floppy Math

Because a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Happy Pi Day everybody!

I made my first dodecahedron too big and it turned out floppy under its own weight. It holds its shape pretty well hanging from a string in my window, but tips over when I set it on a table. The pattern is sound, though, and I'm a huge fan of making things homemade and lumpen that are usually made with rulers, but I'll hafta do a smaller, stand-up-on-its-own one before the pattern's ready to publish. So I miss my self-imposed deadline of this very minute. How come none of the other mathematical constants get their own day? When it's impossible number day can I put my clothes on inside out and walk to school backwards?

Dodeca is a departure from my usual way of designing, which is as close to one-piece as possible so the thing you're creating basically appears in your hands - this one's got lots of pieces and grafting galore, which is its own kind of fun.

Oh, and happy White Day, too!

Like This, but Knitted

I'm taking a quick break from googley-eyed creatures and faboo scarves in honor of Pi Day and indulging my crush on Norah Gaughan with a dodecahedron of my own. It's gonna be like this, but knitted. See you Friday!

Shaker Tape

This weekend I knitted the first half of a dodecahedron (stay tuned - I'll post the pattern Friday for Pi Day) and fixed an old footstool that I got from my mom with Shaker tape to match my rocking chair.

I love Shaker stuff 'cause it's really simple and really strong - you just weave the tape around on both sides like a lawn chair and wind up with something strong enough to stand on. The only tools you need are a hammer, a couple of carpet tacks, and sometimes (if your weave is pretty tight) the back end of a spoon.

The rocking chair was my mom's when I was a baby, and it used to have a wicker back that got destroyed when I was living with Silas - it was the perfect size for his little fingers to pull on. The stool came from my Grandpa's house, and probably from my great-Grandpa's before that. It had leather lacing on it that had fallen apart with age. Now they're both souped up to last another bunch of decades.

More shaker-y goodness here.

Up With Grubs!

Here's the gigantic knitted yellow grub I made for Silas this Christmas. I got tons of funny looks knitting this one on the subway, let me tell you! Silas kinda loves it, and so does his grandma, which makes me really happy.

Godparenting stories that go with it:

Silas, like his whole neighborhood of shorties, is ridiculously obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. But the Thomas stories are kinda depressing lessons in you-are-a-cog-in-the-wheel - Sir Topham Hat is the boss of all the trains, and they cross rickety bridges, broken tracks and gigantical hills to bring him his payload on time. Then he says "You have been very useful." Before he could read them himself, I told the stories to Si so that the trains go on strike. "Down with Topham Hat! Up with Trains!" On Saturday he tossed the grub into the air shouting "Up with Grubs! Up with Grubs!"

The other grub story:

What's a baby cat? a kitten.
What's a baby kangaroo? a joey.
What's a baby human? a baby.
What's a baby bug? a grub!

Whee!

Smashed Pennies

I'm hard at work at some stuff I can't show, so here instead is my smashed penny collection! I just added another one from a trip upstate, so here's the bunch of them before I put them all away. Sorry for my wack photo skills - it's hard to get them to come out legible! Clockwise from the farthest left with the middle one last:

Generic "You Are Special to Me" from the Cheesequake Travel Plaza, smashed after the Ride for Autism on my birthday last year (New Jersey just isn't that scenic - the only one with a place on it was for the World Trade Center); Mount Washington Auto Road, from the top of mount Washington; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, from a trip to DC last year to see the Joseph Cornell show and geek out on rocks; The Bronx Zoo, from when the bug carousel was new; "Adirondacks", from the Modena Travel Plaza on the Northway. It wasn't really a trip to the Adirondacks, but I've been there, and I didn't want to get West Point, which we were closer to; Mount Saint Helens - from the summer of 2003 when it started gushing forth again - I had to see it before I moved back to NYC; Ausable Chasm, from my bike trip last summer; and in the middle is Astroland from last summer, probably but hopefully not the final summer of its existence.

Lost, chucked into the ocean, or "somewhere in this house" as Si would say, are Virginia Beach from a visit to my sis; the Jubitz truckstop, from a bike ride in Portland; and Multnomah Falls, also from a ride in Portland.

Wow, the places I've been.