Geeks with pointy sticks

I aten't dead!

2011-09-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Hello!
I haven't posted for *ages*, and was recently reminded that I really should. So -- I haven't been knitting much lately following some pretty dramatic happenings in my life, which mean I don't have a lot of spare time lately. That and forgetting to take pictures of things.
I have done some stuff though:

I made a collection of rockets for a friend's baby, who was born 50 years and a day after mankind first made it to space. There was a US Saturn 5, the USSR's Soyuz rocket, and the ESA's Arianne. The Saturn 5 was the hardest to do, because there's so little distinctive shaping to it. But I forgot to take pictures, and hopefully (because all good baby toys should be) they'll've been heavily mauled by now and not too photogenic.
Something decidedly NSF-blog-posting for (the awesome) Kate J. I may put photos on Ravelry at some point, where there's a little more privacy. I'd quite like to write a pattern for that one too.
The Little Prince! I read the Little Prince recently(-ish), and was very struck by one of the pictures, in which he's wearing this very flamboyant outfit, so I wanted to knit that. I've got just about all the pieces done, but the sewing up is going to be a pain, so I've been putting it off. I love how that shaping turned out, which is part of why I don't want to rush sewing up.

In other news, I recently obtained a Kindle, and they're totally the future of how to read knitting patterns, particularly since PDF seems to be the standard format for Ravelry patterns, so all of those can go on it.

So yes, that's me. I'm not likely to have much to post for a while, but I will try to write something here from time to time. Hope you've all had a good summer!
Hugh.

International Women's Day! -- with Cthulhusaurus

2011-03-08T09:21:00.001-08:00

Ok, just a quick post now cos I want to get this up for Women's Day.
As I explained, Cthulhusaurus is a combination of T Rex and Cthulhu, loosely based on this image. Being an elder god, Cthulhusaurus is genderless. It is, however, pink and wears ribbons in it's hair*. Naturally if an elder god/giant carnivore mix decides to wear ribbons, it's best not to argue.

So yes, I thought this would be a fun little project with interesting gendery consequences. The design is relatively simple -- it's made of a main body, a pair of legs, and a head, with the coloured strips being knit and sewn on later, and the arms are (mostly) i-cord.
I'm not totally convinced the head is the right size -- I usually make heads too small, so this time I aimed really big, and may have overdone it. I love how the frilly strips came out, they add just the right dash of colour and interest.
Possibly the hardest part was the bow -- there's an extra flap knit on the head for this to tie on to, which was nice and simple, but tying the thing turns out to be *way* harder than I'd imagined.

So yes, I'm rather happy about this :o) I should really take it out for some better pictures in the sun, but as I say, wanted to get this up today.
Happy IWD, everyone!
Hugh.

Cthulhusaurus

2011-02-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Ok, another quick-ish project!
This was suggested by Leah, who said I should knit one of these. I agreed, but said that if I did, I'd want it to be pink and have a bow on it's head. Then things got a bit political.
While I do like pink things with bows on, I don't like that these are the universal symbols of femininity. So to reflect this, I decided that my Cthulhusaurus will not have a gender. Cthulhu doesn't, after all, so it makes sense. And like Cthulhu, if it wants to wear bows, you'd better not argue.

So that's the plan -- a T-rex, with tentacles, pinkness and bows, and is ungendered. Worryingly, this is still one of the less weird things I've knitted.
Hugh.

Feminist Uruk Hai

2011-01-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

Plan for the future -- I want to knit a little troupe (horde?) of feminist Uruk Hai. Why? An awful pun of course:

It is an army bred for a single purpose: to destroy the world of Men.

The plan is to make up a simple Uruk Hai pattern, and replace the 'white hand' logo with a feminist sign. The hard part, I think, will be figuring out what distinguishing features the Uruk Hai have which make them different from any other small green humanoids?

Happy knitting!
Hugh

Predicate scarf

2011-01-19T03:55:00.001-08:00

Ok, new project! Following on from the 'e' scarf, I'm planning to make a second scarf from the same wool. The concept of this is a little hard to explain.
Fortunately it's easier to describe the design itself -- it will be a plain grey scarf, embroidered in the multi-coloured yarn with "+5 resistance to predicates".
So, why? It's similar to Tea Cosy of +4 Wellness I made a while back (and hence to Cayenne's original on which this was based). This refers to role-playing games, in which objects can add or subtract different attributes from players.
And predicates. People define themselves in many different ways, and each of these definitions comes with a range of expected behaviours. Often, I think, people seek out identities in order to know what they should do. By "resistance to predicates", I mean the opposite of this, creating your own identity rather than using a pre-made pigeonhole. It's also intended to be a bit silly -- predicates include any property which can be assigned to a thing, so it's a bit ludicrously broad to claim resistance to them all (and probably counts as a predicate itself).

So yes, bit of an odd project, and rather hard to explain. And possibly involving misrepresentations of grammar. But hey, complicated is good!
Hugh.

e scarf

2011-01-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

Hi folks.
This is a quick, simple little stripy scarf, made mostly because I like the idea of contrasting multi-coloured yarn with a nice solid main colour.
The design is based on the number 'e', or Euler's number. It's a remarkable number, and I'd say it's the second most important irrational number out there, and rather sadly neglected.
Euler's number is the base of the natural logarithm, as well as cropping up in differential equations, limits of sequences, and compound interest. It's also related to pi by the rather amazing equation e^(i*pi)=-1.

So, the scarf -- the lengths of the stripes represent the digits of e: the first stripe has 2 rows, the second 7, the third 1, and so on, giving e=2.71... (In fact it uses pairs of rows, since this makes the colours come out nicer)
As with most irrationals, unless you know exactly what you're looking for the pattern appears to be random, so it's just a nice stripy scarf.

So there it is, stripy e scarf!
Hugh.

Shapematron!

2010-12-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

Right, exciting new knitty programming plan!
One of the harder things to do with a knitting pattern is find out what shape from first principles.
In my first Geometric Knitting colloquium I discussed the relationship between Riemannian metrics and the shape of knitting fabrics, and an algorithm which would take a metric and generate a knitting pattern to yield a surface with that metric. The plan this time is to work in the opposite direction -- to take a pattern and figure out the shape this makes.

The way I want to do this is to model the fabric as a network, each stitch representing a vertex, with connections between it and its neighbours. By modelling the forces acting between stitches it should be fairly easy to make an program which will iterate towards an equilibrium position, which would be the shape the knitting will naturally take. (This position won't be unique,
I think there are two main forces to take into account -- there's a spring-like force between neighbouring stitches, acting along the line between them. Then there's a twisting force acting perpendicular to the surface, which depends on the type of stitch, which makes stocking stitch fabric curl up, and allows ribbed fabric to scrunch together.

So that's the aim, to write a program which will take a knitting pattern, interpret this as a network of points, will work out the shape of the fabric, and display this shape. The last step may well be the hardest one, since I currently have no idea how to do 3D graphics, but I'm hoping this is a standard enough problem that I'll be able to find a good standard way to do that.

Exciting!
Hugh.

More anomalocaris!

2010-12-15T12:36:00.000-08:00

Ok, the anomalocaris is done!

I had a lot of fun making this. The exciting bit is making the "segmented" effect on the body. The body is knit as a tube in the round, then a few rows are knit flat to make a flap, before casting off these stitches, continuing in the round and picking up an equal number of stitches at the beginning of the flap.
The number of fins (and the sewing required) is a little intimidating, and they all need to be placed quite precisely, so that they hold down the side "segment" flaps, as well as overlapping slightly. Fortunately this turned out not to be as time-consuming as I thought, and I'm very happy with how well this turned out.
I'm not totally convinced by the eyes -- they're knit as little hemispheres and lightly stuffed, to give them a bit of a boggle-eyed effect. I think anomalocaris's eyes were raised, possibly even extended on stalks, so this is fairly realistic, but I don't think it looks good here. Possibly the sharp contrast in colour, when the rest of the body is so uniform, is what makes this look so out of place.

Still, I'm very happy with my new anomalocaris! There are more pictures here, including more from the anomalocaris's expedition into Edinburgh's recent snow.

Anomalocaris

2010-11-20T13:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been watching David Attenborough's new series, First Life. It's an amazing series about some of the earliest known creatures on the planet, reconstructing some of the earliest developments which made life as we know it possible.
This is full of all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures, one of my favouries being the Anomalocaris. It's one of the first known predators, using a circular mouth and long claw-like limbs to hunt, a system of fins to swim freely and (probably) surprisingly complex compound eyes.
I think what really fascinates me about these creatures, though, is that they were pioneers, just working out which body arrangements would work, developing new senses and entirely new strategies for living. That's perhaps romanticising it a bit, especially since this is happening on evolutionary timescales.

So the, plan is to knit an anomalocarid. The basic structure will be a tubular body , a system of fins on each side, claws and eyes on the front and tail fins on the back. The interesting part will be getting the segmented structure -- I'm planning to cast off and pick up a few rows earlier to leave an overlapping flap for each segment. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Hugh.

Dolls!

2010-11-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

Quick post today, and indeed, quick knitting.
Local geek Ayla collects ball-jointed dolls and asked me if I might make some knitted accessories for them. I know almost nothing about ball-jointed dolls, probably limited to:

They have ball-and-socket joints, which allow them to articulate in human-like ways
They're popular in parts of asia, which seems to lead to them being linked to anime and anime culture
If you love them too much they will gain a soul and come to life.

I made up a couple of quick things -- a ribbed scarf and a little shawl. It's fun, they're very quick and simple. Here they are modelled by Leona:

I really like how the scarf works, she looks very warm in it. I'm not too convinced about the shawl though, it looks a bit too heavy and warm to really work as a shawl.

Feathery shawl

2010-10-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hey folks.
So, I've been playing with lace shawls! I've been playing around with the Floe shawl as a basis for more complicated lacy designs. I'm planning to make a couple of these, so hopefully this'll be just the first.
The aim was to look like a feathery layered look, with the overlays getting shorter and shorter towards the edge, and representing a bird's wings.
The pattern is really quite simple -- the lace itself is just a K2tog, YO, K1, YO, SKP, and the 'breaks' are achieved by just offsetting this by a couple of stitches. I wasn't sure if this would make the distinction clear enough, until I blocked it and pinned it out (although come to think of it I'm not sure if this yarn will actually block?), so I'm very happy with how it turned out. If I did again though, I would have used a slightly larger repeat so that the offsets are clearer, and more regular.

The shawl has adopted itself a friendly Canadian, as you can see here. Yay!

Hugh.

Even more computer-generated knitting!

2010-10-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

Oh, apparently I forgot to post this one here -- following the fun with the javascript hat-matron, I decided to write up another quick javascript pattern generator, this time for a less trivial pattern.
I picked the Universal Cover Scarf, since I already have that mostly coded up, and just needed to convert it across.
You can see the result here:

Scarf-matron

A friend also pointed this website out to me, which does a similar sort of thing, only much better, and in php:

Knitting fool

I particularly recommend their sweater generator, which has a huge number of variables, a selection of different constructions and even comes up with graphical representations so you can see how it all works. It's very cool!

Hugh.

More computery fun: JavaScript

2010-09-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with learning some javascript just recently, and came up with this little sample program:
Hat recipe program
The program lets you choose a collection of parameters, and then generates a hat pattern to those specifications. The hat itself is very basic -- it's a beanie-type with a ribbed brim and circular shaping at the crown -- it's probably the simplest thing you can knit with any shaping to it at all, so you're unlikely to want to actually knit from this.
Still, I'm interested in this approach to knitting patterns -- if it were easy to write more complicated patterns in this way, you could make them accessible not just in a range of sizes, but in any size anyone cared to knit. You could also provide other customisation, say to fit different body shapes, or just to add variety. And you would never have to worry about yarn substitution, because the pattern would be tailored to your yarn and tension.
Of course this isn't a totally new idea -- there is commercial software which does similar things, and the KnitML project aims to provide a common language to allow this to work. So yeah, I'm quite excited about the potential here to change out whole approach to knitting patterns!

...but this is really just a tangent, and I'm just enjoying playing with javascript :o)

Hugh.

Hey look!

2010-09-02T01:09:00.000-07:00

My "geometic knitting" talks are now up at Toroidal Snark!
This means I am now totally famous-on-the-internet.

Thanks Sarah-Marie!
Hugh.

Aromantic hat latest

2010-08-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts ago I talked about a plan to make an "aromantic" hat, combining the symbol for benzene with some heart shapes, by way of some really awkward coordinate systems.
The key step in this is to make a colourwork pattern for a heart knit with these unusual increases, and this was done by computer (did I mention I'm learning C at the moment? That may be a theme here).

So, the current status of this project is that the program is up and running, and I've knit a couple of test pieces from it, and am quite pleased with the results.
The one you can see here is a smaller version of the heart shape I'm planning to use. It's a little fuzzy around the edges because the shape is so small, and the increases do distort it quite a bit. The final version will be quite a bit bigger, and I may rotate it 90 degrees to that the point doesn't coincide with the increases.

But it's really the program I want to talk about. It works by setting up three types of point, one in cartesian coordinates, one in radial, and one in special coordinates which encode the pattern of increases used to get this hexagonal shape.
It then works through each of the stitches using the 'special' coordinates, converts these into radial coordinates, and compares them with the given curve. If they lie inside the curve, they will be brown, otherwise purple.
One added complication is that the curve is given parametrically, so to compare a given point with the curve you need to solve a (difficult) equation of the form, which then needs some kind of numerical solution. Rather than running a numerical solver on this for each stitch, I broke the curve up into a number of linear segments at the start -- it's then simple to find the appropriate segment and interpolate linearly when we want to know if a point is inside the curve.
The really cool thing is that it's very simple to put in different functions. It would be straightforward to modify it to work with different patterns of increases too (although not necessarily *easy*).

So yeah, I'm very pleased with how this is going, the next step will be to choose yarn and scale this up to hat-sized, then get knitting on the real one! I'll also post the program itself at some point, though it could probably do with some tidying up first.
Hugh.

Linked list knitting

2010-07-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

Bit of an odd project to talk about today (also, if you know me on facebook you may have seen this already.
The idea is to implement a system of knitting using linked lists. There have been quite a few recent experiments into knitting with unusual media, whether it's carrier bags, wire, human hair, or even fibre-optic cable -- you can knit with just about anything which can be made into threads. You could think of this as a really extreme version of this -- a linked list is essentially a thread of data, so why not knit with this? (Or you could see it as just a terrible pun being taken too far, which is probably more accurate.)
So here I've designed a system of knitting using these lists, and implemented it in C.

So, linked list is a data structure in which each data point contains the address for the next piece of data, so to read it all you start at one point and move along the chain following the addresses. I'll actually be using doubly-linked lists -- for these each data point contains two references, which means the chain can self-intersect.

To come up with a system of knitting using these lists, we need to be able to form loops, and to pass loops through each other. This can be done as follows:

This is really all you need to start knitting -- forming a loop corresponds to casting on, we know how to knit into a stitch, and we can cast off by simply threading the 'yarn' through the stitch without forming a loop.
It would also be possible to give analogues for many other knitting concepts -- you can purl by reversing the orientation when you knit, you could Kfb by passing two loops through the stitch, Make by simply forming a new loop in between stitches, K2tog by passing the new loop through two previous stitches, and so on.

So I thought it would be fun to actually implement this, and you can see the results here:
llknitting.c
tensionsquare.c
ribbedcuff.c
linkedlist.h
The first file contains the details of the implementation, the second is a set of instructions for knitting a small stocking stitch swatch, and the the third gives a 2*1 ribbed cuff knit in the round -- hopefully you will be able to see how these correspond to a real knitting pattern. (The final file is the header) If you're using linux you can compile these with the commands:

gcc tensionsq.c llknitting.c

Or:

gcc ribbedcuff.c llknitting.c

I'm not too sure what the equivalent command would be in Windows.
The output from each program gives the positions of the start of each stitch in the array, which isn't terribly illuminating, but hopefully convinces you that it's actually doing something. (I decided not to worry too much about outputting data since it's really the program which is the interesting part.)

So there you go -- that's how to knit with linked lists. If, for some reason, you wanted to do that. So, linked list crochet?

Happy knitting, and/or data structuring!
Hugh.

Aromantic comedy

2010-07-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

Hey folks!
Lots of finished stuff still to post, but am excited about a project I'm planning just now, so I want to talk about that.

So, 'aromantic' is a term used in asexual circles to describe people who find they are not attracted towards romantic relationships of any kind. The theory goes that while a person can be not attracted towards any sexual relationship (asexual), they are often attracted to romantic, non-sexual relationships of various kinds, so 'aromantic' is a sub-classification of people who also aren't interested in this.

And benzene. Benzene is an organic molecule made up of six carbon atoms forming a ring, each attached to a hydrogen atom. An early proposed structure for this molecule had alternating single and double bonds between the carbon atoms:

This has the right number of bonds, so it would make sense, but X-ray diffraction observations show that all of the bond lengths were identical, which rules out this possibility.
In fact, rather than forming pairwise bonds between atoms, the valence electrons form a more complicated orbital between all the atoms, forming a de-localised electron ring, denoted by:

So, it's a pretty awesome molecule. And organic molecules which include a benzene ring, such as phenol and TNT, are referred to as 'aromatic'... you can probably see where this is going.

So naturally I want to combine the two things. The plan is to make a hat design based on the symbol for a benzene ring, but with the central ring replaced by a heart shape. There will probably be six smaller hearts around the edge, where the hydrogen atoms would be, too.
Practically, this will be a more elaborate version of the radial heart-hat I made a while back, although it will take some fiddly modifying to make it work out.

It's going to be *awesome*.
Hugh :o)

Juliana Hearts

2010-07-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I thought I'd posted this a while back, but seem to have forgotten to mention it here.

Last year, a friend from my knitting group, Juliana, died following a long wait for a heart transplant. We wanted to do something to remember her, and came up with this plan -- to knit a collection of little stuffed hearts and give them away as gifts to people. There are really two reasons for this:
First, I'm certain that Juliana wouldn't want people to be sad because of her, regardless of the circumstances. I think it's really a fitting tribute to her to give these gifts away, (hopefully) to bring some happiness to as many people as possible.

Second, we hope that by doing this we can raise awareness of organ donation. I really hadn't thought about organ donation until Juliana became ill, I'd always just put it off. So I really want to encourage people to think about it, to make a definite decision. I'd also encourage people (donors or not) to read the stories on the Legacy of Life website, they do a great job of showing the positive side of organ donation.

So, that's the project.
I've made quite a few of these hearts now, and they're mostly pictured here. I've also written up the pattern for the hearts, which is available as a free Ravelry download, in case anyone would like to make some for themselves.

If I can give you a heart, let me know! As I say, the aim is to give them as widely as possible, so this is really open to everyone. You don't have to be an organ donor, and you don't have to be not-an-organ-donor either, it's all about spreading the happiness.
I also have a bunch of the books from Legacy of Life, which have some really amazing stories and I would totally recommend, so if I can give you one of those let me know too.
And of course, do think about whether you would want to be an organ donor. Then tell people! Preferably your next of kin!

*Also*, how amazing is it that organ transplants are possible? Go Science!

Hugh.

Geoemtric Knitting II ... somewhat belatedly

2010-07-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I've just realised how long it's been since I've posted anything here, and I have a whole bunch of stuff waiting!

A few weeks (well, months) ago, I gave a talk in our PG Colloquium series on the subject of geometry and knitting. The idea was to show off a few mathematical knitting projects I've been playing with, and use them to illustrate some maths.
I'll write about the projects individually later, but in the meantime you can read the slides here:
Slides (pdf)

A couple of the projects used computer programs to calculate the patterns, based on inputted parameters. These programs are written in Ruby, and if you'd like to give them a try they can be found here:
Universal cover scarf
Cellular automata shawl
Hopefully their operation should be pretty clear, and is explained in more detail in the slides. If anyone's interested in knitting from these I'd be delighted to give some tips!

Also, thanks again to my Glamorous Assistant Pamela!

Also also, the Juliana hearts project is still ongoing, and open to all, so if I can send you one let me know. (Hmm, have I really not posted about that here before? More on that to follow then.)

Happy knitting, and more posts soon,
Hugh.

Hyperbolic crochet book

2010-03-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I just got sent a link to this book. I only know what I've read from the description there, but it seems pretty cool. The aim is to explain mathematical and geometrical concepts through crochet, to give a new hands-on perspective on what are usually quite abstract ideas. So yeah, I'm very happy to see crochet being used as a way to promote maths and make it more accessible to a wider audience!
I also think it's awesome that it's reviewed by Dr. Hinke Osinga :o)

Happy knitting, and/or reading!
Hugh.

Ada Lovelace Day!

2010-03-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, it's Ada Lovelace Day again! (Their website seems to be down at the moment, Google has a cached version).
Ada Lovelace Day is a day to celebrate and promote the achievements of women in science and technology, by writing a blog post about a woman working in a scientific or techie field you find inspirational.

So, I'd like to talk about Kate Ho. Kate is originally a computer scientist, and is currently a PhD student working in the sociology of computer systems, in between starting up companies and enterprises.

Specifically, Kate studies "requirements engineering", the process of figuring out what an organisation really *wants* from their computer systems, and how to build the system to provide this. This matches Kate's vision for computer science pretty well -- not just technology for technology's sake, but technology fitted to people's needs, making a real difference to how they get things done.

Kate's other main passion is entrepreneuring. She is constantly looking for new business opportunities, and while I've known her has usually been involved in at least 3 start-ups at any given moment. Now that her thesis is submitted, she has had the chance to move into entrepreneuring full-time and has started Interface3, a company specialising in developing multi-touch surface systems.
Again, her aim in this is to find new applications for technology, to find new ways in which it can improve people's lives, and to make them a reality. I think this is what she is really passionate about -- trying to work out ways in which technology can change the world.

She does lots of other awesome stuff too -- she set up Edinburgh University's Hoppers group, and helps organise Edinburgh's Girl Geek dinners, not to mention running Scottish Women's Rugby. She also knits!

So, Kate -- social entrepreneur, innovator, geek, knitter!

Happy Ada Lovelace day, everyone!
Hugh.

More on Cellular Automata

2010-03-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hi again!
So, ages ago I talked about the possibility of using cellular automata to generate lace patterns. A key step in this is to interpret the cellular automaton as a collection of rules for interactions between chains of digits, travelling left or right, or remaining stationary.
On closer inspection it turns out this is rather more complicated than I'd expected. The problem is that these interpretations can be influenced by neighbouring digits, so:

001
-1-

looks like it should to be a left-travelling chain, but if the neighbouring digits are:

0010
0110

then we need to see this as a chain bifurcating into left-travelling and stationary chains. Worse, if it was

00110
01100

we would probably want to see this as two left-travelling chains running alongside each other.
Because of these problems, I think it is impossible to interpret general cellular automata as chains in this way -- what's needed is a non-local approach. What can be done is to come up with a procedure to read through the pattern and divide each of the `1' digits into chains travelling left, right, or remaining stationary (and some `orphan' digits left by themselves). This is then fairly straightforward to convert into a lace pattern.
I feel this is cheating a bit, it's not really in the spirit of cellular automata and there are a lot of arbitrary decisions to be made. There are further complexities I haven't dealt with -- how do you deal with chains bifurcating? Or colliding? So far my chains are just left hanging.

Still, it generates some very nice patterns with some interesting features. Mostly though I'm just enjoying the idea of computer-generated lace, there's something magical about putting in a set of logical rules and generating a pattern.
So, applying this to rule 30, generating the pattern starting from a single `1', I get something like this:

(not sure how that'll turn out, but it's just to give an impression)

So, this turns out to be rather more complicated than I'd expected, and very much less canonical than I'd hoped. It does produce viable patterns though, and makes me rather keen to try to elaborate this method.

Pictures of the finished shawl soon!
Hugh.

Settlers of CTAN

2010-02-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!

Back in November I mentioned a a LaTeX package I was working on for typesetting knitting patterns. I left this out for checking for a while, and finally got around to tidying it up and submitting it to CTAN. It's all up and running now, and you can download it here:

Knitting Pattern class

It works by providing a collection of useful commands which should automate all of the layout features you're likely to need in writing a knitting pattern, so that you can just write the pattern rather than desktop publishing. I won't say too much about that here, since it's all explained in detail in the documentation (and I've spent way too long reading that today).
Copyright-wise, I put it under the LaTeX project license, which seems to mean you can use it, distribute it, and modify it to your heart's content. You're also explicitly allowed to sell patterns produced using it. So if you've been thinking about writing up some patterns, give it a try! You'll need some familiarity with LaTeX, but it's very easy to pick up, and hopefully the sample template I included will make it all pretty self-explanatory.

While I was at it, I came across this other package, which produces knitting charts in LaTeX. I haven't tried it yet myself, but it looks pretty interesting.

(pictured is the CTAN lion, drawn by Duane Bibby)
Enjoy!
Hugh.

Universal cover scarf

2010-02-20T03:30:00.000-08:00

Hi folks!

Continuing the mathematical theme, my next plan is to knit the universal cover of a punctured disc, arranged to make a ruffly scarf.

So, what is a universal cover? The idea is to take a space, and form a new space which is locally the same, but in which any loop can be shrunk down to a point. This is useful because when we try to extend local properties of spaces to global ones, it's usually these kind of loops which cause problems.
As an example, consider a disc with it's centre missing, the `punctured disc'. A loop in this space can be shrunk down to nothing provided it doesn't wrap around the hole. To remove these loops, imagine we take an infinite number of these discs, and declare that a path which crosses the x-axis in a clockwise direction moves one disc up the chain, and if it crosses anti-clockwise, one to the right. Now if we take a loop in this space, if it wraps round the centre point we've moved up or down the chain, so the loop is no longer closed. Then any loop in this new space corresponds to a loop on the punctured disc which doesn't wrap around the hole, and can be shrunk to a point. This space is called the universal cover of the punctured disc.
Another way to see the same space is this -- take an infinite sequence of discs, each slit along the x-axis. Glue the top edge of each slit to the bottom edge of the slit on the preceding disc. You can then stretch this out to make a sort of spirally chain, which I think would make a neat scarf.

So, how to knit this? If you imagine following a circle around the origin in this spirally chain, it will form a helix (assuming you've `stretched' the same way I have, this isn't entirely fixed) in space. My plan is for these helices to form the rows, working from the outside in. Of course, since I don't want my rows to be infinitely long I'll only have a finite number of discs in my chain.
One of the cool properties of helices is that it's quite easy to calculate their lengths (which is really quite rare among curves). Since the space is symmetric under shifting along the axis of the helices (after a suitable rotation), it's then just a matter of working out how many stitches to decrease in each row and spacing these evenly along the length. This is the same problem as knitting surfaces of revolution (see also), and it will be easy to adapt the solutions from there.
The actual maths I'll carry out using Ruby, this seems like the kind of problem it's very good at.

I should say too that I'm fairly sure this kind of scarf already exists, though without the mathematical intent. Must make sure to look around and see if I can find some links to compare with. I'm hoping that not being flat will make it nice and warm, but will have to see how it stands up to Edinburgh's winds.

Happy knitting, and/or calculating!
Hugh.

Dennou Coil

2010-02-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

Right, the first attempt at the Seifert surface is done, and is now languishing while I try to work my camera. In the meanwhile, here's another quick project:

Dennou Coil is an anime series we've been watching at our animation society. It's based around a group of children playing with augmented reality glasses. The glasses have lots of useful functions, they act as phones and maps, as well data functions and virtual pets. It's a lovely, well thought-out series with great characters and a nice level of quirkiness.
One of the quirks is a piece of anti-virus software which crops up a lot, named "Satchi" (short for "Searchmaton"). This is embodied as a large pink blob with a happy smiling face, which tries to reformat everything suspicious it comes across. In the context of the series Satchi is supposed to be quite scary, since he's quite indiscriminate in his formatting, and the children spend most of their time playing with bugs in the game so they're usually in the firing line.

So, I'm planning to knit a Satchi. The structure is fairly simple -- he has a pink blobby body, with a smiley face design at the top. He has two large, spindly grey `hands', and four spheres embedded in his front. I'm hoping to make the spheres removable (in the series they can detach and move autonomously), but I'm not sure how the fastening for that will work, so they may have to be fixed.

Boku Satchi!
Hugh.

Seifert surfaces

2010-01-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

Hi folks! My next mathematical project comes from a suggestion from local knot-theorist Julia. The idea is to knit the Seifert surface of a trefoil knot. This will be very similar to a project (http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~mrwright/crochet/) of Matthew Wright's.

So, what is a Seifert surface? There's a theorem in knot theory that given any ('tame') knot, there is an orientable surface whose boundary is this knot. I think there's a good constructive proof of this, which also allows you to find out what this surface is. This surface is the Seifert surface of the knot.
If you want to play with them, there's a very cool program, "Seifert View", which will draw them for you (it's free, but sadly only runs on windows).

So, how to knit this? I think this should be pretty straightforward -- I'll start from the middle of one side, increase outwards to form a disc, then split into three to form the 'struts', before rejoining and decreasing to form the top disc. The magic is that before rejoining the 'struts' at the top, I'll flip them over to give the twist. When I'm done, I'll crochet around the edges to highlight the boundary knot. This way has the advantage of being seamless, though possibly at the expense of making the joins less neat.
I'm also considering threading some wire through this boundary, as Matthew Wright suggests, to give the shape rigidity, and then see if I can hang it as a decoration.

I'm planning to write up a pattern for this one, partly because it should be good and quick and partly because I need to get more practice with the LaTeX pattern formatting package I wrote. Since it's so similar to Matthew Wright's work, though, I'll have to ask him before I go publishing it.
I'm not sure how well this approach would generalise to other knots, I may have to ask Julia about that.

So, let's see how it goes -- should be good and quick, since it will be quite small.
Hugh.

LaTeX and knitting

2009-11-27T05:15:00.000-08:00

Hi folks, we've been talking about this on Ravelry for the last week or so, and I thought I should really put it up here too.
The idea has been floating around for some time of writing a LaTeX package which will typeset knitting patterns, although exactly what it will do and how far it should go has been rather harder to pin down.

I decided to give this a go, and put something together. The idea is that it will provide you with simple commands which will provide a basic skeleton to your patterns using (very) simple commands, so you can just write your pattern without having to worry about the formatting, or even work from a template.
The class I wrote to do this is now at a testing stage -- I've got all the commands I thought would be useful, and I now need to see how this works for people writing actual patterns. I'd rather not make it *entirely* public just yet, so we're doing some testing in GeekCraft on Ravelry. If you'd like to try it out, go there and it will redirect you to the files and instructions and things.

The plan is that after a period of testing I'll collect some feedback, make whatever changes people suggest, then I'll stick appropriate "do what you like" copyright notices in it and release it into the wild. (I suppose I should write some proper documentation at some point too.)
I wonder if CTAN would take it? It *is* pretty elementary.
An important thing to note (and someone mentioned on GeekCraft) is that it should be pretty modify-able too -- since it's mostly dealing with style I'm hoping people will personalise it. Nothing in there is hugely complicated, it's mostly just a matter of tidying it out of the way.

So, if it sounds good to you, look out for it in the near future, and if you're on Ravelry you can come give it a whirl and let me know how it goes!

Relatedly (and coming out of the discussion of this, I was pointed to KnitML. I haven't read up on exactly how much it's capable of just yet so I'll write more about it when I understand it better, but it looks like an amazing project -- go check it out!

Hugh.

Blog note

2009-11-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

Hmm, spam-bots seem to have found this blog today, so I'll put comment moderation on and see if it clears up at all. This in no way excuses you from posting comments, which is mandatory :op

Hugh.

Hand grenade

2009-11-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

Hey -- just a quick post today, but I realise I haven't been updating this much, so I thought I should post some of the little projects I've been doing.
So, on a strange whim I decided to make a hand grenade. I wasn't too sure about this, because it must be pointed out that grenades are vicious and lethal weapons designed to kill people and destroy things. One thing I *didn't* know about them, until I was looking up information for this project, is that the little raised panels (on some grenades, not all have these) are designed to fragment into shrapnel on explosion, killing anyone nearby. I suspect their purpose is a bit blurred by their use in computer games and films, which naturally gloss over that kind of detail.

That said, they are a very powerful symbolism to them too which is quite divorced from this, about power, change and danger (I suppose the same goes for most military things), and that's more what led me to want to knit one. That and because I've been listening to Green Day's "She's a rebel" way too much lately.
The design is pretty simple -- it's a tube, with a bit of tapering at the ends. There's some (not terribly well done) stranding to give the 'panel' effect, and the top part is knit separately and sewn on. It doesn't have a pin, mostly because I want to be able to throw it (seriously, everyone should have at least one knitted toy for throwing at the tv) and, ironically, metal bits would be slightly dangerous for that.
Really it should be quite a lot squatter and more tapered, but it's very recognisable anyway, and the designs for real grenades do vary quite a bit.

So yeah, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, the biggest concern was that the long-ish floats make the stranding a bit difficult.

More than one Wug.

2009-10-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hi folks.
I've got a strange little project to describe today. A psycholinguist friend was telling me about an experiment called the Wug test, the aim of which is to get children of various ages to form a plural of 'wug', a fictitious animal, among other things. You can see scans of the original images here. You can also buy merchandise, if you're that way inclined.
Aside from being pretty cute, they're fun little nonsense monsters, and they have the weird property that you're not allowed to talk about them in the plural. So, this is the plan -- I'm going to knit a Wug. Then I'll knit another Wug. Then I'll have two of them. I'll probably knit up one or two of the other monsters, which have the other plural sounds.
The patterns will be quick, simple, and prominently feature googly eyes, since they make everything cute.

This is in no way as weird as a psychology experiment having a line of merchandising. Geeks!
Hugh.

Sad news

2009-10-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

Hi folks.
Sad news this post -- I've mentioned Knittiana here a few times. She was very ill for a long time, and had been waiting for a heart transplant. We just heard recently that she had died.
She was an inspirational and incredibly brave person, and she meant a lot to the folks in Edinburgh. If you're not an organ donor already, I'd urge you to read about it (here if you're in the UK, or Germany, the US, or Canada). It's a big step, but it's something you should know about before you decide one way or the other.

There'll be more to write about this later, but just now I just want to say that we all miss her.
Hugh.

The Knitter

2009-09-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Exciting news this time!
If you're a regular reader of "The Knitter" magazine, you'll know they do a feature in which they select a knitting group each issue and display a collection of their projects. This edition they've chosen City Knitty, so you can see some of us and what we're up to! One of my long-unblogged hats (the heart-hat, which uses some nifty maths/compsci trickery to convert a heart pattern into polar coordinates) was one of the projects, so it's now officially famous :o).
And since another of the featured projects was Madeleine's Helward's world I got an extra mention too!

Thanks to CK's Georgina for organising this!
Hugh.

Prime factors scarf

2009-08-31T00:38:00.000-07:00

Right, new project!
This one follows on from the prime number scarf I made a few years ago, which I think was before I started this blog, so it doesn't have an entry here. It was a series of horizontal stripes, with a different colour to represent the primes.
My sister asked me to make a version of this which would give a times-table. I decided the best way to do this would be to pick a colour for each of the primes, and make horizontal stripes made up of the prime factors making up that number. From the prime factorisation you can then work out which numbers divide which, and many more number theoretic properties too.
It's not really viable to do this for *all* the primes, since there are so many, so I had to restrict this to primes under 12, since this is the usual limit for times tables (Is this the same everywhere? Maybe it's just a UK thing?), all other primes are then assigned one colour. So it's a kind of colour-coded version of Eratosthanes's sieve.

I think it might have been a better choice to say that not just primes over 12, but any number with a prime factor over 12, should be left blank, since this won't appear in the times-table at all. This would give a rather different effect - the first way means the colours get more broken up as the scarf progresses, as the larger numbers tend to have more distinct prime factors, so they colours are all mixed together. The latter way would be less cluttered, with the "prime over 12" colour coming to dominate quite strongly be the end.
Knitting-wise, this scarf involves rather a lot of stranded knitting, so I've been trying out the trick of holding yarn in each hand, which has been quite fun. The hardest part is that the number of strands varies, from just one up to three, so keeping the tension even is quite a challenge.

I should mention too, that I've just come across this counting pane design by the Wooly Thoughts folks, which seems to work along quite similar lines, although the factors they colour are not restricted to primes. Go look! Also check out their other things, they have *loads* of cool mathsy knitting projects!

Happy knitting everyone!
Hugh.

Unrelated geekery...

2009-08-14T01:59:00.000-07:00

Hi folks! Haven't posted anything here for far too long -- I really need to get down to finishing off some projects. And taking photos of hats. So, should do some of that soon, but in the meantime I really wanted to post this.
It's a project of local geek Bob, and while it's not technically knitted, it is certainly geeky and extremely awesome:

This was a Triumph

Not much I can say about it other than "wow". So, wow!
And since I'm posting this, I should really put up a link to this too:

Huge success

Awesome, awesome craftiness. Enjoy!
Hugh.

Filet Dragon Shawl

2009-06-09T05:15:00.000-07:00

Hey again folks, time for some more not-about-hats posting, and this time a rare crochet edition*.

I've been having an odd urge to try some filet crochet(Ravelry) - this is a form of crochet in which you work a square grid mesh, and produce a pattern by filling in some of the squares. This can make some amazingly delicate and beautiful lacy designs, and the complexity of some of the designs is rather epic. (I should give special mention to City Knitty's own Sarah Moore, who has some absolutely stunning filet doilies.)

So, I'm planning to make a filet shawl. This is rather a foolish and recklessly overconfident plan, since I only barely know how to crochet in the first place, and this is a rather large project. But still, a knitxxor's gotta do what a knitxxor's gotta do.
The project is based on Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books, particularly Tehanu, which I tend the think of as the last one, though that's not entirely accurate. I'd say everyone should read this, but since I still need to read the later books I may not be one to talk.

[This next bit is going to be pretty spoilery... ish.] At some point in "Tehanu", there's a song sung, which just comes up in passing:

Farther west than west
beyond the land
my people are dancing
on the other wind.

This relates to a folk tale which is told, that once, long ago, there was only one type of people, and they had wings. Over time, they learned to make beautiful things, and some of them loved these beautiful things, so they stored them up and built huge fortresses to protect and defend them. Eventually, spending all their time in their fortresses, these people stopped flying and lost their wings, and these people developed into humans. The other ones though, preferred to live wild and free, never owning or storing anything, they kept their wings and developed into the dragons.
This is (broadly) what the song is about, wanting to be away with your dragon ancestors, soaring over the ocean rather than labouring away hording stuff. Naturally I can't explain it as well as le Guin does.
[/spoilering]

...so, the plan is to make a shawl with a big dragon motif across the back, and a border with this folksong written across it.
I made some sketch of how this should be laid out, and I'm liking how it's looking. I've sketched up some charts too, but they still need some finalising. And I've made up some swatches and more or less figured out how the filet technique works(thanks Cynthia!), so now it's on to getting it done!
I'll try to post some of the sketches once I have the charts sorted, assuming I can get them into a format I can thumbnail properly.

Also, knitting in public day this week!
Hugh.

* - because a crochet hook can be just as pointy a stick as a knitting needle.

Cthulhu toy

2009-05-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

I'd kinda forgotten about this one - I made a little stuffed Cthulhu toy for local geek, and knitter, Rachel, and her imminent Norggling(I checked, this is apparently the approved term). It was a little ad hoc project, made up of nice simple shapes and largely made up as I went along.

Design-wise, the arms and legs have little sloped tops made with short rows which allow them to attach nicely to the body, and I'm very happy with how these turned out. The head is the most complicated part, it is knit as a ball down to the mouth, then you knit a few i-cords to form the first layer of tentacles. After re-joining and knitting a few more rows, there are a second row of slightly larger tentacles. All of the tentacles have short rows included to make them a bit messy and disheveled, they naturally don't lie flat.
I did toy with the idea of making a mouth-pouch to fit in between the two rows of tentacles, so that he could 'eat' things, but I'm not sure how child-able that would be. I experimented with a couple of different kinds of eyes - I had planned to use amber teddy bear eyes, but these green cat's eyes somehow really suited him, so I stuck with those. The wings are based on the design from the Cupid Panda, and again I was very happy with how the 'feathers' turned out. I like too how spiky the tops of them look, it gives them a nice evil feel.

The thing I like most about this though is the way the proportions all came together. The wings somehow add a kind of balance to the whole thing, and there's something about the big limbs which makes it just very huggable. The big problem was that the yarn was really too thin for the needles, so that when it's stuffed it's a bit see through and looks a bit thread-bare.

So yeah, there we have a cute little Cthulhu, all ready to set about indoctrinating the next generation of geeklets(I do love the idea of geek children, growing up with all this kind of stuff just being *normal* :o) ). And best wishes to Rachel, to Norgg, and to their coming Norggling!

Hugh :o)

Herman, the cabaret starfish

2009-04-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Right, another non-hat-based post!
I've been meaning for a long time to post things by other people, and this seems like a great time to get going with that, starting with a present I received from (the awesome) Miya.
This started off life following Knitty's Swell pattern, but was heavily modified and accessorised into a cute stuffed toy. It reminds me a lot of the style of Mochimochiland (which is awesome, and everyone should visit), particularly their Mochimochi-grass. I particularly like the little coloured tassle.

And of course, every stuffed toy needs a backstory, so here goes - Herman is a starfish, who works in cabaret, and dreams of becoming a star(in the astronomical sense). He's not really sure how a starfish develops into a full-blown star, but he knows this is what he truly wants in life. For the moment he's reading up on astronomy in the hope that the other stars will be able to give him some helpful advice.

The photos here show him on a visit to Musselburgh beach to see some old friends, and feeling a bit wistful.

...also, it's just possible I've been playing with stuffed toys for too long.
Anyway, thanks Miya, and happy knitting everyone!
Hugh.

Ada Lovelace day!

2009-03-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

It's Ada Lovelace day today, and to celebrate some folks are getting together to write blog entries about a woman in technology they admire. I try to avoid putting too much politics here, but I figure this fits into the 'geekery' aspect of this blog.

So, I'd like to tell people about Graciela Chichilnisky. This will be largely based on her article "Sex and the Ivy League", so it's not exactly well-researched or cross-checked.
So first, who is she? She is one of the forerunners of modern mathematical economics, using geometric techniques to build economic models which have had some *huge* shifts in development policy worldwide.

Why do I think she's so admirable? Firstly, she is ridiculously talented. She skipped through college to start a phd in maths early, where in a 'test' year she proved herself by coming top of her class. (This despite raising a 2 year old child by herself and not speaking much english). And the rest of her career seems every bit as impressive.

Secondly, through all of this she remained deeply committed to helping others, to building models of international development that would help poorer countries and give them a more equal footing in the world, and particularly to the concept of sustainable development. She states that "the only genuine source of happiness in life is the feeling of being useful to others", and she really lives this.

Thirdly, she has had to go through some pretty shocking discrimination to get where she is. She says in this article that she recommends a policy of "turning dung into fertiliser" for women suffering discrimination, to take the 'energy' of that discrimination and turn it to their own advantage. When I first read that, it struck me as pretty blase, pretty dismissive, and maybe it's only that easy for her because she is so talented. But reading more about her, I'm realising that she *really* know what discrimination means, and even with her abilities it hasn't been easy.
Professionally, there have been several points in her career when important results have been attributed to male colleagues with serious career-threatening consequences, and spent at least 10 years in litigation against Columbia over pay discrimination. She also suffered more personal discrimination when she found she could not travel to Argentina with her first child - at the time the child would belong entirely to the father, a fact which kept her away from her home and her family at a particularly difficult time in her life. And she seems intent on using these experiences to help other people who are dealing with the same things.

So, Graciela Chichilnisky. She is an amazing mathematical economist as well as a fantastic person, and I would recommend reading more about her. I'm very much planning to myself :o)

Happy Ada Lovelace day everyone o/
Hugh.

Slogany mittens

2009-03-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, I should post about this now for time reasons.
The idea for this comes from a discussion about Lisa-Anne Auerbach's knitting. LAA knits amazing designs with witty slogans on them, and is quite simply amazing. You can find her on Ravelry, and she also has a couple of websites. Her subjects are usually political, often provocative and always genius. My project won't actually look anything like hers, but I really wanted to plug her work.

So, sloganny mittens. The idea is to have a pair of mittens, with a slogan on each.
On the right:

"Community,
Identity,
Stability."

The motto of the world-state from Brave New World. And on the left:

"Listen!
Avoid Magic!
Be Aware!"

A saying from a short story "Solitude" by Ursula le Guin(in the collection "The Birthday of the World").
The first is the guiding principle behind the perfect(in some sense) human society, in which everyone is cared for and looked after, everyone is content and noone wants for anything. It's also entirely social - noone does anything individually or has(or needs) any privacy.
The second is a saying from what le Guin describes as a society of introverts - they live alone, not intruding on each other, everyone in perfect freedom. The meanings of the three phrases are a little obscure, and exactly what is meant by them is kind of the point of the story(go read it!).
So the two slogans are kind of opposite, but neither is really the whole story by itself - Brave New World is written as a dystopia, this perfect world is in it's own way a nightmare scenario, as would be the world of "Solitude".

I wanted to post this now because I notice radio 4 have a programme about Ursula le Guin up just now - it was broadcast on Tuesday, so folks in the UK will still be able to find it on iPlayer(I think iPlayer is only available in the UK, but I could be wrong?)

That's the plan!
Hugh.

A tank which is also a giraffe

2009-03-08T01:23:00.000-08:00

Right, giraffe-tank pictures!
The tank part is made up of a simple block with an angled front and the tracks are garter stitch loops sewn on. I had intended to cover the tracks on top(apparently this is standard in tanks nowadays), but I found the thickness of the tracks would make this too bulky. The head and neck of a giraffe then replaces the turret part.

I like how the giraffe part turned out, but I really think the tank was a bit too simple. The track coverings might have improved this, or it might have been better to extend the giraffe's splotch pattern over the tank. Still, as a nice quick project I'm quite happy with it, and I think it nicely leads the attention towards the giraffe part.
Now, I need to think of something I can actually *do* with this?
(Pictured here with Ray, who happened to be wearing a tank-related t-shirt when I took it along to visit anime-people)

Coming soon - hats. Lots of hats.
Hugh.

Black Lagoon

2009-02-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

Hey again.

So, a quick silly new project I should blog about. This one is kinda an in joke, so bear with me.
Lately the local anime society has been watching the series "Black Lagoon". It's very much an over the top action programme, and... to say I dislike it would be something of an understatement. Usually with bad series I'm happy to accept their flaws and look for something positive, but there's something about Black Lagoon which somehow I find totally infuriating.
During one of out after-anime discussions*, one of the anime folks suggested that given the silliness of the series, they should really have an episode about "a tank which is also a giraffe". And... that struck me as such a great image that I decided I *had* to knit one.
So that's the plan, to knit a tank which is also a giraffe. After playing with some ideas, I decided the best way to do this would be to make a simple tank body, then replace the turret with the neck and head of a giraffe. Fortunately, I already had a giraffe pattern to hand from my safari adventures last year, and the body was a very simple shape, so it's come along nice and quickly. (Actually I'm cheating a little - it's more or less finished, modulo some possible finishing touches I may add, but I thought I should blog the design up first anyway).

And remember kids, Black Lagoon - just so no.
Pictures soon!
Hugh.

* - more accurately, my latest rant about it's total disregard for physics, plot, character design and/or common sense.

Mathematical Fiber Arts Exhibit

2009-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Right, more belated bloggings today, and quite a bit of belated excitement in this one! In January, the AMS held it's [not at all] annual "Special Session on Mathematics and Mathematics Education in Fiber Arts" in Washington, and I was invited to send my trefoils along to be exhibited there. Naturally I was delighted that they were chosen and to be able to show them off to other geek-knitters! Even more awesomely, local geek-knitter Madeleine's "Helward's world" was invited along too.

The photos from this event are now up, so you can see the trefoils on their exciting adventure to Washington here, and you can see Helward's world here, and you can also ogle the other exhibits too(although this may lead to a burning desire to knit Seifert surfaces). You can read more about the event here.

So yay, the trefoils are famous! Worryingly, they're also more well-travelled than I am...
More bloggings soon!
Hugh.

Catching up with the lions

2009-01-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

I think I didn't blog this at the time because I didn't have any pictures, but the Gay Pride lions have moved on to a new home, at the LGBT health and well-being centre over near McAree's. Here you can see them lounging around the welcome desk. They seem happy and well, and I'm sure are enjoying the attention.
There's other lion-retrospective news too - the extra bonus lion is well and truly settled in at the primary school he was going to, and is apparently very popular with the children, and they've decided to name him Rainbow.

Cosmic microwave background hat

2009-01-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Hi again folks.
So, today an old idea which I'm just about getting around to planning seriously now. This started with a discussion here about the big bang and background radiation(or more accurately, a whole bunch of helpful geeks helping me with physics - thanks folks!).
So, science, and a quick recap of background radiation. According to the big bang theory, in the early days the universe was very hot, and full of light. As it expanded and cooled, this light has lost a lot of energy, but it should still be there. This is called "cosmic microwave background" radiation. The stories of early experiments into detecting this are quite famous, but the upshot is it was detected experimentally, and as I understand it, is some of the hardest experimental evidence for the big bang. Lots more cool information at Wikipedia.
In the 1990s, the COBE satellite made some very precise measurements of the energy of this radiation, and found that in fact it varies(though not by much). The thinking is(well, was, back when I kept up with popular science) that these variations would be caused by tiny variations in the very early universe, which would grow larger as it expanded and these tiny variations would lead to the formation of galaxies and stars. So these variations are very important - they could well be responsible for the entire structure of the universe we see today. Since then there have been more accurate probes, particularly WMAP, which just gave some new measurements last year. And what better way to celebrate all of this than with a hat?

So the plan is this - to take one of the images produced by the COBE probe(WMAP is more accurate, but I think the resolution is too high for my purposes), chart up the data and using stranded knitting, knit it into a hat. Possibly making up a few over the top lines about how this hat contains the pattern for the universe along the way. The main difficulty is drawing a chart of the right kind, which is mostly a question of manipulating images to make a nice grid in polar coordinates. (That said, other people seem to have done this much better, than me as you can see here).

So yep, that's the plan. Perhaps I should write "COBE" on it too, so people will realise it's not just a splodgy coloured hat.
Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Finished alchemy mittens

2009-01-21T02:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, first finished object for a while - the alchemy mittens are done! I tried to keep the pattern reasonably simple, which probably helped a lot. Also there was a lot of snooker on tv, which is ideal for knitting along to!

I'd intended to make this in the round using two circular needles(I've just come across this technique, and it's awesome), but ran into some problems - because of the way the stranding works, with independent bands on the front and back, it would be difficult to work this in the round, you would need to carry the green yarn too much. So I decided it needed to be based on intarsia in the round, which meant a switch to dpns(because I'm using interchangable needles rather than "real" circulars, and they don't handle purl rows well).
The intarsia in the round gave me some trouble - I'm not sure if I'm remembering it being easier than it was, but I ended up with some loose stitches at the join. This might mean I was somehow wrapping the yarns wrong, or possibly just that you shouldn't try to join the intarsia pieces at the end of a needle? I suspect the latter, since the stitches just looked loose rather than wrong. This seemed to get even worse when the shaping started to get involved at the top of the mitten.

Pattern-wise, I may be able to explain the design a bit better now I have visual aids. The left mitten represents antimony and the right is tin- I chose these elements because they had nice alchemical symbols and roughly the right atomic numbers to make the patterns work and fit nicely onto a mitten.
The symbols on the back are alchemical signs for the respective elements, although I suspect noone would actually recognise them without looking them up. The number of spots on the back of the hand give the atomic number of the element(51 for antimony, 50 for tin), and they're arranged to show how the electrons are divided up into shells(or, I suppose it's position in the periodic table?).
The spots on the front represent the number of neutrons in the most common isotope, so that the total number of spots on both sides gives the atomic weight. They're also supposed to give them a slightly checkered look. I'd planned to make the front kinda textured based on a pair of gloves I saw made by the mighty Juliana, which gave them a wonderfully grippy look, but chickened out cos I wasn't sure how the texture would interfere with the stranding and was too impatient to do the swatching first.

So yeah, I'm very happy with how these turned out, the dots give them a nicely complicated look and the symbols came out just about the right size that they dominate without overpowering the rest of the design. I'm curious how it would have looked if the symbols were a different colour, but I think I prefer it this way in the end. They could maybe have been done on smaller needles to make the fabric denser and warmer, but this was rather a "what I had to hand" project.

Yay!
Hugh.

Alchemy mittens

2009-01-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

Right, continuing Operation Catch Up With Knit-Designing, I thought I'd post about the alchemy mittens I have underway.
So, what's the idea? I wanted to make a pair of mittens which would encode alchemy symbols and chemical information about certain chemical elements in a subtle enough way that they will look a bit arcane, while actually being entirely about chemistry.
Each mitten will represent a chemical element- I've picked antimony and tin for these ones, but others could be fairly easily substituted. It'll have the alchemical symbol for that element on the back, along with a pattern of spots which represent the atomic number of the element, arranged in a series of bands representing the number of electrons in each electron shell. On the front of the had there will be another collection of spots representing the number of neutrons in the commonest isotope of the element, so that the total number of spots on both sides gives the atomic weight of this isotope.

Why is a little harder to explain, but it has something to do with the different attitudes we have towards alchemy and chemistry. I think we have a tendency to see science as a bit dull and safe, as very *normal*. Alchemy, on the other hand, is a kind of magic- it's crazy and mystical and occult. I think we'd do better to see science a bit more that way - after all, it contains dragons(see also), time travel and guns that shoot lightning. And the really amazing thing is that science can *prove* that all these things exist(well, 'prove' isn't quite the right word in the last case, but hey).
So that's kinda what I'm aiming for with these mittens, that they will be based on chemistry, but in a slightly magical/arcane/alchemical sort of way.
Also, because alchemy symbols are neat.

I've done most of the knitting for them now, so hopefully will have some finished objects to show in the near future(and hopefully my explanation will be a little more coherent then).
Hugh.

Bell-ringing(ish) cardigan

2009-01-09T03:55:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!
Well again I've failed to update this for way too long, despite having a couple of projects I should've mentioned. So without further ado - the bell-ringing cardigan. Sort of.

The idea for this cardigan grew out of a discussion of bellringing with Mair, and how this might be expressed in knitted cables. As I understand it, a bellringing pattern is produced by repeated applications of a pair of permutations (subject to some constraints), and the aim is to run through every ordering of a collection of bells(usually four, five or six). Some quick calculations suggest that a full 'peal' with five bells would involve 120 changes and would run roughly the full height of a jumper.

This project is a baby cardigan along similar lines: if you use just three cables, any pair of transpositions will run through every ordering of the three cables. This pair of transpositions can be chosen in six different ways, so the idea is for this cardigan is to have six different cables to represent each of these choices. The cables are picked out in intarsia to make the rearranging clearer as well as to make the whole thing pretty and colourful.
The 'ish' is because not all of these transpositions is allowable in the bell-ringing problem - the position of a bell in the sequence can only move by one place for physical reasons, but we haven't included this constraint here - some of the patterns involve swapping cable 1 with cable 3. This leads to some fabricky issues too, since this is quite a big cable and distorts the fabric a bit. Some experimenting shows that this isn't too bad provided the cable rows are appropriately spaced though.
One other problem is that these patterns don't distinguish "over" and "under" crossings, so these have to be more or less made up. To make the braids (more or less) alternating(so that if a cable went 'over' on the previous cable row it will go 'under' on the next) narrows it down a bit, and I seemed to come up with the right number of solutions, but it struck me as a little arbitrary and I'm not sure if there are others. Quite possibly there are exactly six though, and I just haven't spotted the reason for it yet.

So there we go - colourful little baby cardigan with intarsia cables, group theory and possibly some bell-ringing. I actually did most of the knitting over christmas and just need to get around to sewing it all together, so hopefully it'll be all done and ready to post pretty soon!
Happy knitting,
Hugh.

Cellular automata lace

2008-11-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Hi folks!
This is an idea I'd been vaguely intending to develop for quite a while, but didn't get around to seriously implementing until last week.
So, a cellular automaton is a rule for taking a grid of binary numbers, and generating a new grid in which the value of each entry is determined by the previous entry in the same and adjacent squares. So, if you take a 1-dimensional cellular automaton, it takes a row of 1's and 0's, and makes a new row, and each entry is determined by the entry above it and it's two neighbours. They're extremely simple, but they can produce some suprisingly complex patterns.
My idea was to use this to generate lace patterns - the 1's represent holes, the 0's plain stitches. There are some technicalities to overcome - lace knitting has left- and right-leaning holes, and while you could just pick one and apply it everywhere, I wanted something which would reflect the way digits 'travel' in CA patterns, so that you would arrive at a pattern of left and right travelling lines, meeting, annihilating, generating new lines. You can do this in a reasonably canonical ways - by looking at the three digits on the previous row you can more or less say it's heading left or it's heading right. There are some cases where a choice needs to be made though, so I just choose these. This loses some of the generality, but isn't too bad.
Having made these choices, I wrote a short program to choose a cellular automata 'rule' at random, pick some starting conditions, and apply the rule to generate a pattern. A second program then looks through the 1's this gives, and by looking at the arrangement above them translates this into a pattern of K, YO, K2tog and SKP stitches. Putting the output of this into a spreadsheet then gives you a lace pattern, and best of all, this is all entirely automatic. One such spreadsheet is here(for now- may need to move that at some point). (alternate rows are plain)

There's a couple of problems - this particular pattern involves a lot of double yarn overs. I'm told you can manage this by working K1 P1 on the alternate row, but I suspect it may be neater to write a quick program to look through the pattern and eliminate these - I think that wouldn't obscure the pattern and might need to a nicer finished piece, as well as easier knitting. So I need to try those out and see which solution I prefer.
The other problem is that there aren't that many 1D cellular automata, 16, by my count. While CA were very much the motivation for doing this, I kind of feel that sticking with them is selling the lace pattern generating half of the programme a bit short - it could apply equally well to any binary grid. So while this is a good starting point, I'm thinking about maybe inventing some slightly more elaborate generating rules - a quick way would be to allow a block to be decide by the five blocks above it, or the previous two time steps. Another approach I'd like to try would be to replace the binary grid with trinary, which would give a much wider family of rules, then map all the 2's back to 1 to produce a grid to feed into the lacing programme.

So yes, let's to play with. I particularly wanted to mention this because there was an extremely timely xkcd comic about cellular automata. In fact, I think the CA he's talking about simulating the universe with there may well be the same one in my lace pattern, though I haven't looked too closely.

So, anyone for an extremely geeky shawl?
Hugh.

Roses

2008-11-13T02:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, just a quick post cos I realise I haven't written anything here for months.
So, I decided to make some roses for a rose-loving friend. I had a fiddle around with a couple of rose patterns, particularly a nifty one from Knittiana which involved twisting your knitting to form petals(I love that about knitting - that whatever you can possibly do wrong, someone somewhere will have found a use for). But I couldn't make them come out how I wanted, they all looked kinda rose-ish, rather than actually like a rose.

Then I came across a great crochet pattern for them from RS Island crafts, which was very simple and turned out really well. I haven't done much crocheting, so I was very impressed with how well this turned out, and heartily recommend the pattern.
I did have some trouble with the sewing up, particularly attaching the stems to the flowers, but that's probably me just now knowing how to sew.

So yep, there's some roses! Should be getting back to posting soon, I have a project or two underway that I've been too busy to blog yet.

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Knitting the polar way

2008-09-23T02:56:00.000-07:00

Hi folks.
I've been playing with some knitting-related maths lately, and after a certain amount of experimenting I've just about got a design ready to be playing with.
This kind of follows on from the ideas behind the 'science doilies', trying to knit standard shapes in non-standard ways. Particularly, I've been looking at knitting colourwork radially.
Planning colourwork when knitting flat is fairly straightforward, the lack of shaping means that the stitches obey nice easy-to-follow patterns. If you knit radially(starting at a central point and work outwards), it becomes a lot harder to judge. The reason for this is that flat knitting is based on cartesian coordinates, where radial knitting is using polars.
So to make this work, I came up with another little Maple program which will take a curve(given in normal cartesian coordinates), convert this into polar form, then use some numerical trickery to convert this into a workable knitting pattern. This seems to work pretty well, with one caveat that you need to be a little careful about spacing your increases - the calculation assumes that the increases are all entirely homogeneous about each round, which isn't possible in practice because the stitches are discrete. In particular, the standard trick of distributing increases evenly along the round(as you would for most lace doilies) isn't even enough, I think it distorts the colourwork pattern too much.
The reason I'm really excited about this though, is that the same program could also be used to work out short row patterns for knitting non-trivial shapes in the same radial way. Initially I'd hope to be making sensible rectangular pieces, but ultimately I think there's the potential for some truly mind-boggling designs from this.

I'm working on a design just now which will be a bit of a trial run for this - the plan is to make a little baby jacket for my little nieceling, the back panel of which will be knit radially with a pattern of colourwork hearts. I'll blog about that design specifically another time, because there's some nifty maths behind the heart pattern(if you're part of the 'geekcraft' group of Ravelry, you may have heard me being excited about this already). I'm not too sure how I'll do with the rest of the jacket, will have to play with it a bit more.

So yep, more about that when the actual knitting is underway, and assuming more goes well, I'll say some more about the mechanics of the radial coordinate program then too.

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Alien surfaces

2008-09-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hey! It's been pointed out to me that I haven't written anything here for ages, and I realised there's a couple of projects I haven't found the time to mention yet.

So, first off, Alien surfaces!
This project actually belongs to local mathematician Madeleine Shepherd, but I helped out with some of the maths, so I'm sure it's worth a post :o)
As part of a festival exhibition on 'alien surfaces', artwork inspired by descriptions of alien planets in science fiction, Madeleine knit a model of , the surface you get if you take the curve y=1/x and rotate it around the x-axis(for the region x>1 - although I think we took x>1/30, or thereabouts, to make the curvature show up more).
This surface has some very cool properties mathematically - it turns out that it's surface area is infinite, while it's volume isn't, which means that you could, hypothetically, fill one with paint, but it would be impossible to paint it's entire surface. Which is a bit mind-boggling. (The trick is that in comparing a volume with a surface area in this way, you're kind of assuming that you're covering the surface with a layer of paint of uniform thickness, the volume is only finite because the trumpet tapers off quickly as x becomes large.)

Since the surface has a rotational symmetry, writing down a pattern for it is relatively simple - you just need to work out the circumference at each row, convert this into a number of stitches, and work out how many stitches you need to decrease each time.
The difficulty is that the rows in this case do not correspond to the coordinate x, but the arclength - the distance you've travelled along the curve from the first row. Now, in differential geometry, this isn't really a problem, you can just change coordinates without any difficulty, but actually doing this in practice takes a bit more work because while it's easy enough to find the arclength from the position, inverting this formula is quite hard, and needs to be done numerically.
Happily though, Maple actually cooperated with this, so I now have a bit of code which is capable of doing this more or less automatically. If anyone's interested, or is keen to knit there own surfaces of revolution, I'd be happy to go into more detail on this. I was considering tidying up the code a little and convincing it to print out real honest-to-goodness knitting patterns, but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in this and have access to Maple?

And I love how the surface turned out, there's something amazing about writing down a bunch of maths and getting to see it suddenly turned into a piece of knitting! I'm quite keen to read the book it comes from too, I'd be interested to see how far the author was able to take this idea, and how this unusual geometry affected the people living there :o)
(Oh, and the tapir is because Madeleine seems to be quite keen on them)

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Doilies... for science!

2008-07-16T04:16:00.000-07:00

Hey folks!
I was doodling away last week and came up with some ideas I'd like to play with knitting. The main idea is that knitting can always be divided up into rows - mathematically we'd call this(ironically) a fibred surface. But this has some consequences - if you want to knit a shape, you start off by picking a fibration. If, though, you picked a different fibration, you could knit the same shape, but come up with a radically different pattern, and a radically different look. A very simple example would be if you were to knit a rectangle lengthwise rather than width-wise(if that's a word). I've come across examples of this elsewhere, such as (the awesome) Nona's Sidewinder socks, Ysolda's sideways hat Urchin, and especially this absolutely amazing sweater(which presumably belongs to Numei.com, but I haven't been able to find there), but I'm looking to take this idea a bit further.

My first experiment with this idea goes like this - I want to take a question mark, and knit it into a doilie, but in such a way that the question mark is actually a row in the pattern, so it's somehow intrinsic to the fabric somehow.
Or course, while I'm arranging my rows in interesting and nontrivial rows, it would be a shame not to throw in some lace. this will be relatively simple this time around, but I'm really hoping that in future attempts I'll be able to make this a bit more extreme and take advantage of the interesting shapes to make some really interesting lace patterns, but I don't have much experience with lace yet, and I really wouldn't be able to create my own.

Oh yes, and you might wonder why I chose a question mark? Well, primarily because it was the first symbol I found which was simple enough to do this with, but also this is supposed to symbolise inquisitiveness, the need to always find out more which I think lies behind all good science.

So there you have it - Science doily!
Hugh.

More whales!

2008-07-09T02:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, just a quick post - following on from the Erst-whale, I decided to make a little school of other whales, and that each whale would be wearing a different kind of hat. Ever since I made the bee-hat, I've been feeling the need to put tiny hats of stuffed toys. I think the whales are particularly suitable for this because with out the "1" on the side the whales are a bit plain and featureless.

So, hats. The first one is a top hat, the second is(inevitably) a fez, and the third is a floppy sunhat. I really like how the tassels came out on the fez - I had some trouble with this, but eventually found that lots of strands of sewing thread worked very well. They're tied very tightly in the inside, so hopefully this is still baby-safe. The sunhat didn't come out so well - I'd hoped that the natural curliness of the stocking stitch would make the brim turn upwards nicely, but I think it curls a bit too tightly here. This might be better if I'd knit the brim on larger needles(here I'm using DK yarn and 3mm needles, so it's quite tight). I also had some trouble making the concave edges, where the brims meet the main part of the hat - for a convex edge a row or reverse stocking stitch makes a nice fold, but the other direction is harder. I found a row of knitting through the back of the loop gives a bit of a crease, but not as much as I would have liked. Any ideas, anyone?

The photos here were taken at the Hermitage, the little nature reserve next to the Observatory, where I took the whales to see the ducks. The first one shows top-hat-whale watching the ducks over the pond. The second one doesn't show so well, but it's fez-whale meeting a suprisingly friendly robin(can you see him? On the other end of the bench?). And the third one is sun-hat-whale having a doze in the sun, reading the newspaper and enjoying the view.

The plan is to make a couple more whales(cos there's a couple more hats I want to try) and then they'll be shipped off to the Neonatal unit all at once, cos I haven't sent them anything for *ages*.
Happy wednesday!
Hugh.

Completed Comrade Leonine

2008-07-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Comrade Leonine!

So, what to say about him? He follows the same pattern as the earlier Gay Pride lions, so there wasn't too much pattern to make up. He was also good and quick to knit, since the pattern is small and aimed to be as simple as possible.

Added to the basic pattern is the moustache and little beard - these are sewn on afterwards, and I'm very happy with how they turned out. Being so small it's very delicate getting these bits just right. And then there's his little hat. This is intended to be a little baggy flat cap. I think it could have done with being a little flatter, really. The crinkly bits at the edges came out nicely, but could probably do with being a bit more pronounced. I decided the hat really needed to be lightly stuffed to hold it's shape, but I think it might also have helped to tie the top down a bit to make it less tall and bring out the edges more.

The photos are taken around KB - I took Comrade Leonine and a few of the Gay Pride lions across and had some fun posing them in different positions. There are a couple more photos, and a bit more explanation here: Facebook link.
(I took some sensible pictures too, but they seem kinda dull in comparison - I guess if you're very keen to see more schematic pictures, let me know and I'll post some).

Otherwise, enjoy, and happy July!
Hugh.

Comrade Leonine

2008-06-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Back to the awful puns, I'm afraid- I have a geeky friend who is very much into his soviet history, and is a very big fan of Lenin in particular, and asked me if I would be able to knit a Lenin doll. There are some soviet Lenin caricatures around, particularly the one above, and I'm told the beard and the cloth cap are the main identifying features.
However, I decided that getting the human features right would be a little too difficult - I think you need to get them *just* right to look good. So instead, I came up with this scheme - based on the lion pattern I've played with before, I'll make a little lion with Lenin's hat and beard - hence, Comrade Leonine :o)

I should say, I'm really not keen on communism in general, or the soviets in particular. I am, however, very keen on history, and people being interested in history. I should really read more of it myself.

So yay, happy knitting, and happy history-ing, people o/
Hugh.

Patterns!

2008-06-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

Hey folks!
I've been putting a few patterns up on Ravelry lately, and it only occured to me recently that actually I have made it kind of hard to find them. So I thought I'd put up a quick post listing the patterns which are available just now, and try to post in future if I add any new ones.
I'll post ravelry links for each of them, as well as the direct links to the patterns.
So yep, here they are - if you want to give any of them a try, let me know(I'd love to know how they're doing), and happy knitting!

Crab torus
A stuffed toy based on a crab, incorporating a torus. Or you could make it with a disc. I think the pattern isn't entirely clear, hopefully I'll get around to making some edits soon.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/crab-torus
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_4hj5g7vfchttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_4hj5g7vfc

Cthulhu mittens
A pair of mittens featuring runes and symbols relating to the Cthulhu stories(with artwork borrowed from Chaosium). I think the shaping for the mittens was a little iffy, you might prefer to just use the charts - it would make a lot more sense to duplicate stitch them on once the mittens are finished.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cthulhu-mittenshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cthulhu-mittens
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_2dj92kqfdhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_2dj92kqfd

Orbital
A knitted 'd' orbital - actually 3dz^2, it represents one of the ways in which an electron can behave in an atom. It's quick, simple, geeky, and I'm told it would make a good baby toy.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/atomic-orbitalhttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/atomic-orbital
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_15dmv8q8chhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_15dmv8q8ch

Bee-hat
It's a stuffed bee, in a little pointy hat. I really like how the little dangly legs turned out, so I'm planning to make a few more.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bee-hathttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bee-hat
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_20wffw76fvhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_20wffw76fv

Feminist torus
A squishy huggable stuffed female sign. I'm totally delighted with how well the shaping came out on this(seriously, you'd be amazed how much maths is involved in this).
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/feminist-torushttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/feminist-torus
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_18t32hxqdqhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_18t32hxqdq

Lions
My little collection of toy lions, the Gay Pride. I really like this pattern, the shapes are all very clear and simple, and I like how they turn out.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lionshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lions
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_0dbvd8vgvhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_0dbvd8vgv

Trefoils
These are the two trefoil knots - one is a mirror image of the other, but no amount of fiddling will let you rearrange one into to other. They also have googly eyes and make good stress toys.
The pattern was written a while after I knit them, so it's really only "as far as I remember".
Also, in a minor correction, you really need to stocking stitch a row or two after you cast on - the pattern tries to make you start working short rows immediately.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trefoil-knotshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trefoil-knots
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_11gbvw4jfzhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_11gbvw4jfz

Hugh.

Marine research

2008-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, for some reason I seem to have quite a few aquatic projects I'm planning to make at the moment, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post them all at once.

First, whales! I think I mentioned I was keen to make more whales, so there are likely to be at least a couple more. And given how much I enjoyed making the bee, they're likely to have hats. I have a bit of an ongoing hypothesis that all animals look better in fezs, so we'll see. It rather depends how silly I'm feeling at the time, but I think a small school of whales each with a different hat would be very cute. I suspect these will be headed to the Simpson neonatal unit, because I would like to send them more toys.

Second, pufferfish! I had an idea a few weeks back that it would be very cool to make an inflatable pufferfish. I played around with some stitch patterns, and I think I came up with a way for this to work. The fabric needs to be very stretchy, so the fish can inflate to a good size. More difficult to work were the spines - ideally these should show when the fish is inflated, but be concealed when it's let down. I think I can make this work using a combination of ribbing and a modified fur stitch, but it remains to be seen how convincing this will be as 'spines'. I still need to play around with the fins a bit, and see how much like a fish I can make it look, but I'm fairly confident it'll at least look cute when it's inflated.

Also, psalmon! (This is another of those awful puns) I'd like to knit a small collection of salmon, each of which will have a verse/phrase/something from a psalm sewn onto the sides. This might be tricky because they're likely to be smallish, so there won't be much space, and I'll have to work the shaping to leave a big enough blank patch for sewing onto. I think the fins might be a little tricky too, I think I'd like to make elaborate lacy patterns to represent the patterns on them.

And finally, hammerhead shark! There's something fascinating about their shape, which I think would be fun to try and knit. It'll be interesting to try to contrast this with the whales, see how well I can bring out the difference between them. I understand (female) hammerhead sharks are capable of undergoing parthenogenesis, which is my mind makes them badass feminists, so I'll be looking to make this into another feminist toy. I'm not quite sure how that will work yet, but I suspect it'll depend on what I can come up with to do with it when it's done.

So yes, lots of ideas, with varying levels of vagueness. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with most of them yet though

Erst-whale

2008-05-31T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hey again!
This project is a definite contender for "worst pun I've com up with for a while". It started with one of the PhD folks mentioning how cool a word "erstwhile" is. I then decided it would be fun to make an "Erst-whale"- "erste" being german for "first", this consists of a whale with a large number 1 on the side.
I tried to make the pattern good and simple, the knitting starts with two flaps at the back of the body, then joins in the round and then continues up the body, finishing at the nose. The tail and fins are then made seperately. I'm very pleased with how the tail worked out - the idea was that once you'd made the tail, the two flaps on the back would form a nice join onto it, and I think that came out really well. I also put in a couple of short rows to make the tail curve upwards slightly, and am very happy with the effect there too - it's quite subtle, but I think it adds a lot to the look.
The '1' I duplicate stitched on, which is a bit of a new experience for me - I've tended to do these things with stranding, but am very impressed with how easy this was, and how well it came out. I'll definitely be using that more in future.

I kinda realised part way through too, that this doesn't really line up with any particular species of whale. I hadn't realised there was such a variety of shapes to the different species either - I've always thought this was kinda the 'normal' shape for a whale. I'm quite keen to try making a more realistic sperm whale at some point, mostly because the sketch I drew of one turned out really well, but also because I'll be able to make some kind of a Moby Dick reference out of it.

So yep, awful puns and a whale - woo!
Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Bee-hat

2008-05-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hey!

So, this is a quick little project, based on an awful awful pun.
A little while ago, our preacher-guy had a series on "big hairy audacious thoughts", or "B-HAT"s, the kind of really big simple ideas behind christianity which are so big and obvious we can kind of skip over them.
So, I was a little slow, but I suddenly decided I absolutely had to make a little bee with a hat on. Given my taste in puns, I guess this was kinda inevitable really. So the plan was to just make this quick and simple - the head and body are just ellipsoids, the hat is just a cone with a ribbed brim(actually this idea is kinda borrowed from some awesome gnomes we had knit at city knitty a few weeks back), and the legs are based on the ones from the badger torus, long long ago.

I decided to make the legs quite long and dangly, and I really like how that turned out. You can kind of play with them, and they somehow seem really expressive. The wings I made a bit lacy, to make them look a bit filmy and light. The Mighty Nuala helped me out with that, and I'm very happy with how they turned out. So yay, I'm really very happy with how this turned out.
Slight problems, sewing up the body was a bit of a pain, with the stripes. I should really have knit it in the round, but hey. Also, sewing the wings on was a little tricky, I hadn't left much of a border at the bottom and it was kinda hard to tell which edge was which. But it seemed to work out ok, and hopefully noone will look too closely.
So yay! I'm just wondering now if the hat would look better with a little pompom? And after the fun I had taking photos, I'm not planning to take it around the botanical gardens and take many more. Oh, and more photos on ravelry!
Happy spring!
Hugh.

Boba Fett

2008-05-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

Hi folks!

I've been forgetting to update this for a while now, so I've got a couple of designs and even some finished objects to post, so look out for those in the next few days. For today though - Boba Fett.
A member of the local scifi society pointed this comic out to me, and knowing that I like to make odd toys, challenged me to make a Boba Fett like the one shown there. It looked like fun, so I decided to give it a go. To my shame, I didn't actually know who Boba Fett was - I haven't actually watched the star wars films, so I had to do some research. Hopefully I've got all the important features.
The plan is for this to be just a small, quick thing, using nice simple shapes and very little planning. I want to say "amigurumi-style", but I'm not sure if that's specifically crochet. I think this will be a particularly suitable character for this, because I suspect almost all of the recognition comes from the helmet, so as long as that's there I suspect it's be pretty instantly identifiable.

So yeah, happy geeking!
Hugh.

'D' orbital

2008-04-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Hi folks!

A quick project to talk about today - last week I had a strange urge to knit an atomic orbital. The story goes that according to quantum mechanics, electrons live in atoms not as particular points, but as probability distributions. The standard way to represent these distributions is to draw surfaces enclosing 'most' of the probability. (I'm a little shaky on how this works exactly)
Surprisingly, the geometry of these surfaces can be quite interesting, particularly as the energy increases.
I decided to make the 3dz^2 orbital, which is my personal favourite - it's complicated enough to be very recognisable, while being simple enough to make some sense. I should say thanks too, to the Scientific Knitters group over at Ravelry for helping me figure out the shape.
I should say too that one of the components of this particular orbital is a ring, so this counts as another torus toy.

So here it is! I decided to knit the ring and the cones in different colours just to make it look colourful and nice, but apparently this has some physically relevance too - I'm told there is some kind of phase difference between the wave functions in the two parts. I don't really understand, but it's a nice coincidence.
I decided too to make the ring detachable, in the hope that this would make it more play-with-able, but this has the downside that the ring can't be tight enough around the waist to stay in place by itself. I guess I could make a second version in which the ring is smaller and sewn on to make it more realistic. But I kinda like it this way - it looks like it should be a child's toy, and I'd hope the detachable ring adds to this.
There's one slight problem, that I knit this on slightly too large a pair of needles, and the fabric on the ring part isn't quite as dense as I'd like. I should really have learnt by now that if you're knitting stuffed things you need to move down a needle size or two.

So yeah, it's all done, and I put the pattern up on Ravelry if anyone wants one of their own.

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Cupid panda finished!

2008-04-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Right, it's been a while since I posted anything here, so this is really a little out of date, but the cupid panda is finished!
It turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I'd expected, especially the shaping around the legs. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out, but it was always planned as a prototype, so hopefully the second version will be able to correct these faults.
The main problem, I think, is that the chest is just too big, which makes everything else look a bit small by comparison, but I think the arms and head need to be larger too.

The eyes are bothering me too, I think they're too big and staring, so in the second version I'll be using some smaller amber eyes, which I'm hoping will make it look rather less... intense.
I'm very pleased with the little wings though, they've come out so cute, and just about exactly how I was hoping they'd look.
I really like the little feet too. They took a couple of attempts, and the pattern I settled on was really quite complicated(and is based on a baby's bootee pattern.

There's a couple of more awkward problems though - first, people seem to assume he's a ghost panda, so I think he really needs something extra to emphasise the 'cupid' aspect. But I'm not sure how to do this - I could make a little quiver, but arrows would be a little tricky(maybe some kind of pipe cleaner arrangement, with little knitting heart tips?), and would make it very much not child-safe. Similarly I could make a little bow, but I think that would need pipe cleaners and would be a little dangerous. So I'm not sure - any ideas, people?
The other problem is that the legs are designed to tilt backwards a bit. I really like the posture they have, and I guess it's good if you're holding them but it makes it very difficult to make the things stand up. Maybe that's how toys should be though, more for holding than admiring?

Anyway, hopefully will get around to making a second attempt soon-ish. In the meantime, happy knitting!
Hugh.

Squid purse completed!

2008-03-18T01:31:00.000-07:00

Hi folks!
I've finished making the Vampire Squid from Hell purse, so here we go with some pictures. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, particularly the way the bottom of the cloak ruffles up, and something about the shape of the body really makes me think 'squid', I think possibly it's how the eyes are placed relative to the fins.
Also, when it's wrapped up, it really doesn't look like anything in particular, which, again, I'm very pleased with, it makes it all the more suprising when you undo it and suddenly you have a squid.

I did take a few liberties with the shape to make this work better:
When the vampire squid wraps it's cloak over it's head, I think it doesn't cover the whole body - it leaves the top open so it can do bioluminescence tricks with photophores(which look like eyes) on the top. For the purse the cloak is a bit longer so that it can close properly.
The fins, I think, are squarer on the real vampire squid. I changed them to be more swept back to give it more of a squidy feel*, although I think this shape is really borrowed from a differnt kind of squid.
The biggest change though, is the eyes - I used amber teddy-eyes, where the original eyes are little pale milky blue spheres, with no features at all. You could probably do this better with some kind of beads, or possibly just stitching on a couple of baby blue spots, but I wasn't sure they would be recognisable as eyes. It might be worth trying though, I really like the original's eyes, they look so innocent and out of place!

The big problem I had was with the cloak - I wanted the tentacles to be cabled, but since they don't move across the fabric there was no easy way to do this. It would have been possible to cable back and forth by one stitch, so it wouldn't move much, but I didn't like that idea. Instead I worked increases down one side and decreases on the other, something like

Kfb, slip 1 to cable needle, K2, slip 1 back from cable needle, P1

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to give quite the same tension as normally cables, so they don't stand out as much as I'd like(although this might just be to do with the yarn I used). So you can't really see the tentacles on the right side. To correct this, I'd like to make a second version in which the tentacles are just ribbed. This would mean making the rest of the cloak reverse stocking stitch, but perhaps the change of texture will suit it. It will definitely make the whole thing a lot quicker and easier to knit, the cables seemed to take forever.
Sadly I still don't know what to do with one squid-purse, let alone two. I was thinking it would make a good dice-bag for roleplaying types, or something along those lines.

Also, it's been suggested** that when the vampire squid wraps itself up, it looks kinda like it's trying to disguise itself as a pumpkin. So here we have the world's first lol-hellsquid:

Happy knitting o/
Hugh.

* - Thanks Stephanie!
** - Thanks Clare!

Snail II

2008-03-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!

This project is actually a little old, but I finished making a second version of the Snail torus! I've been delaying posting pictures of this so that he would be more of a suprise for his intended owner. He's now arrived safe and well down in London with Helen, so it's time for pictures!

Design-wise, there are a couple of alterations from the first version("Spiral"). Aside from a different colour scheme, the shaping on the tail is a little better - Spiral's tail was trying to be a little more complicated than it needed to be, and didn't quite work out. Similarly the shaping on the head and particularly the face is a lot simpler and I think works a bit better. That said, I really liked the expression Spiral had, but I don't think I could actually reproduce it. Mostly likely it was more a fluke of tension working out just right than anything, certainly I can't claim to have planned it. I think the tail might have been quite a bit longer too, though not by any deliberate decision.

I'm still not entirely convinced by my knitting of the short rows in places though, I don't think I got the tension quite right with the wraps, but hopefully that's just me, since I know where to look for them, and it won't bother other people. And I'm still not entirely happy with how straight the shell was. I'm not good at sewing at the best of times, and this is a particularly delicate

The big difference really is that this time I took notes properly, so hopefully will be able to write up a coherent pattern of this. I'm very happy with how the two snails have turned out, and I'm very keen to see how interested people will be in this design. (After I posted the first snail, I got a very nice message from a knitter who keeps giant african land snails - I had no idea you could keep snails as pets!)

Have fun!
Hugh.

Vampire squid from hell purse

2008-02-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

Hi folks.
I'm not sure if you remember, but there was a news story a few months back about 'Vampyroteuthis infernalis' - I think biologists had managed to video one in the wild for the first time, but I'm not sure. It's name means literally "Vampire squid from hell", which is quite a name to live up to.
I found a video of this on YouTube(I'm not sure if this is the footage everyone was excited about?):

Squid video

But I for one think this is an awesome, awesome creature. It has a funky oxygen-gathering 'cloak', it does nifty bioluminescence tricks to confuse predators, and when threatened it can even turn itself inside out.
Then last night a friend was asking about ways to knit purses. Or course you can sew in zips and other fasteners to make good safe seals, but I was wondering about the little bags banks give you for putting coins in - they manage to seal quite securely without any extra pieces. And they do it by turning inside out(sort of).
So that's the idea for this project - to make a small knitted purse in the shape of a vampire squid, which you secure by turning inside out. I made some preliminary sketches of this and it seems quite plausible - the body will be a pouch with an opening towards the bottom, then the cloak will fold over to cover the body and fasten with a drawstring.
One of the things that really appeals to me about this(other than being able to tell people I'm knitting a vampire squid from hell, of course) is that most of the time the squid would be in it's inside out form, so you won't be able to see what it is. I kind of like how that reverses the ideas of 'right' and 'wrong' sides.

Then I'll just need to find someone who would like a vampire squid purse...

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Baby photos!

2008-02-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

Hi folks!
A little follow up on the Maxwell cardigan - Dave was good enough to send me some cute baby photos showing the cardigan in action.

Isn't he adorable? I'm suprised(pleasantly) how well it seems to fit, I'd pretty much just aimed big and hoped for the best. He seems quite happy to be promoting maths too :o)

More baby pictures, not to mention various pro-canadian propoganda, can be found over at The Urminskys.

Have a good week o/
Hugh.

Cupid panda

2008-02-08T05:10:00.000-08:00

This project comes (rather randomly) from the comic Tea Club.
It's very cute, and centres around a university student who loves tea. (I think it's defunct now though) It featured a rather odd little story about Cupid pandas, which I think was a reference to an earlier comic by the same artist. Sadly I can't find that comic anymore, and you might need to see that to understand quite why I find the pandas so appealing. Suffice to say, they're not quite a sweet as they look.
So the plan is to knit a Cupid Panda. I suspect getting the shaping right will be a little tricky - it's easy enough to knit something roughly the same shape, but I think the cuteness with these things has a lot to do with the detail - getting the proportions just right, making everything curve just enough. I'm very interested though in how this relates knitting to drawing. I think with drawing, and more so with cartoons, the big skill is understanding what it is about an object that makes it recognisable, what the cues people latch on to are.
So I'm planning to have two attempts at this, hopefully the first one will let me get the shape roughly right, and with the second I'll be able to refine it to something that has the same cuteness as the original.

I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it once it's done though. My current plan is to have it done somwhere around Valentine's day, and send it to the premature babies unit, who apparently are always keen on knitted toys. I'm not generally keen on valentines day, but this scheme appeals to me for slightly convoluted religious reasons.

Hugh.

Maxwell cardigan

2008-02-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

The Maxwell cardigan is now completed and has been passed to it's new home for baby-ifying. I've been pretty amazed at the response it's had around the maths department.
There were a couple of problems - the stranding wasn't quite as even as I would have liked, and particularly the last 'J' looked uneven to me. That might be just because I know where the mistakes are, so I'm tending to see them more. And it'll probably settle a bit once it's been washed a few times(particularly cos I didn't quite get round to blocking it properly).

The edges rolled rather more than I would like too, but I suspect this is more of a problem for trying to take good photos than it will be for actual wearing, when lying neatly isn't such an issue.
I'm a little concerned too that the yarn might not have been the best choice. I used RYC cashsoft, which feels amazing and I've been wanting to work with for a while, but I think from looking at the washing instructions that it might be a little delicate for use in baby clothes. So I'm hoping it wears well.

I wanted to say a little about the equations too(with assistance from Wikipedia):
The first is Gauss's law, and says that charge is the source of electric fields.
The second is Faraday's law. I'm not sure how you interpret that one really.
The third doesn't really have a name, but it says there are no magnetic monopoles. That is, there is no 'source' of magnetic fields like there are for electric fields.
The fourth is Ampere's law. The first term there, together with Faraday's law, imply that there are wave solutions to these equations- if I remember rightly, this was what first led Maxwell to suggest that light could be electromagnetic waves.
Some combination of the second and fourth one also explain the principle behind electricity generation - that you can create a current in a wire by passing it through a magnetic field.

So yes, they're pretty amazing. The cardigan itself is borrowed from Knitty's Devan design, which is nice, simple and elegant.
The baby in question is one of the Urminsky clan, so you can see more pictures over there, and hopefully we'll have some of Maxwell wearing the cardigan soon :o)

Hope y'all like it :o)
Hugh.

Totoro progress!

2008-01-21T07:39:00.000-08:00

Hi folks!

So, the Totoros are coming along well, and I'm so pleased with how they've turned out, I thought I'd post a quick photo.
They're not quite done yet, they both need tails and possibly feet, as well as deciding if they should have some weights in to help them stand up. I'm leaning towards no - I think part of the cuteness of them is how completely unbalanced they look.
They big one may have to wait a little while, unfortunately, until I can nip home and pick up some grey wool. He'll probably need to be a bit smaller than the actual proportions would suggest too, but I that seems to vary quite dramatically anyway, so I'm not so concerned about taking some liberties.
I'm also extremely proud of the seams on the back of the blue one(although you can't see that from here). I realised I'd been doing mattress stitch all wrong, and suddenly figured out how to do it properly. They're still not perfect, but *so* much better. I'm now actually looking forward to when I next get to sew some seams!

Hugh :o).

Smoothie hats

2008-01-17T06:06:00.000-08:00

For a couple of years now, Innocent smoothies have run a campaign in which they ask knitters to make little hats to go on their smoothie bottles. Around christmas time they then sell drinks with hats on(in some places, but these seem to be quite hard to find). In return, they then give money to Age Concern.
It's a really nice idea, as well as raising money it gets people involved, raises the profile of both knitting and Innocent, and since they encourage people to modify their basic hat design as much as they like, it's a great chance to be creative which they would never be able to match if they just produced the hats themselves on a large scale. I think we at City Knitty have a bit of a soft spot for them too because they gave us a huge number of freebies to get us going for knitting in public day.

So I'm having a play around with some of these. It's nice to be knitting something for charity as well as playing around, and this seems to be a great way to get through the loose ends of wool I have a bad habit of collecting. It's also a great little thing to do in between other projects, particularly for those times when you need something simple to knit but don't want to start any big new project.
My main reason for doing this though(and this is where it gets geeky) comes from a talk I went to recently about Bach, which got me thinking about art generally. There's a whole philosophical ramble behind this(ask me if you're interested), but the upshot is that I'm keen to knit in a more impromptu way, taking little ideas and working them into things, whereas up til now I think I've tended to start with a big idea and go from there. That's a little vague, I know, but the concept is still a little vague for me.

Hugh :o).

Tea - now with added Wellness!

2008-01-14T13:55:00.000-08:00

Right, tea cozy is done! It was a nice small project so it hasn't taken long at all. The design ended up being quite a bit more intricate than I'd expected- I really wanted to knit it mostly in the round, with some flaps and buttons so that it could be fitted onto the teapot without any stretching. I'm sure this isn't really necessary, but it seems more elegant, as well as being a handy excuse to add some buttons.

I decided too to add a little ribbed border around the spout. Mostly this was because I realised the hole I was leaving for it was quite large, but I think it makes a nifty little feature too. Unfortunately the spout on this teapot curves quite sharply so the border could only be a few rows wide without needing some drastic shaping, otherwise this could have been a rather tighter fit.

Of course the big test will be how long it can keep my tea warm for. I've tried it a few times, and it seems to keep it hot for just about long enough, but the real test will be tomorrow, when I take it in to the maths department. The motivation for this was largely so I could drink pots of tea while I'm working, rather than having to make several cups of tea. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself- that way this almost counts as work :o)

Slight cause for concern is that tea seems to stain knitting really quite badly, and seems to be nearly impossible to get out, so I'm going to need to be rather careful with my pouring in future...

Wish me luck!
Hugh.

Cheshire cat scarf

2008-01-12T05:01:00.000-08:00

Ok, the Cheshire cat scarf is done!
I'm not really happy with how it turned out, to be honest. The peach colour for the mouth is a bit too bright, and it doesn't quite go with the dark brown colour of the stripes. I don't like the edges, which look quite messy and would be much better with some kind of border to hide them. I guess I might decide to add some kind of crochet edging to make this better, and happily I think I have enough spare yarn to do this.
But the big problem I have with it is that the cat looks kinda cartoonish to me. It needs to be simple to be clear so I'm not sure how this could be improved. It's possible an added edging would help with this too, take some of the emphasis away from the picture.
On the whole though, it seems like this was an interesting idea but didn't really work out it practice.

That said, the combination of stranding and shadow knitting did seem to work out, so it at least shows this is possible. One concern is that the stranding does affect the stiffness of the fabric, so when you work both at the same time it would be better if the stranding ran the whole length of the piece, rather than just a small patch here. This would make the pictures show up more clearly, with less care taken to hold the piece flat.

But hey, maybe I'll like it more once I've put it away for a while. I do have another plan or two I'd like to try out with shadow knitting at some point too.
Hugh.

Tea-cozy of +4 wellness

2008-01-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

Hey!
So, a while ago I was wandering around Ravelry and came across a design for a tea cozy. (The Ravelry link is here, but needs some logging in.) It was designed and made by crocheting-mathematician Cayenne.
It's a tea cozy of +4 wellness. After all, tea cozies are pretty cool, but surely a tea cozy *and* +4 wellness has to be even better? I'm not really a role-playing geek myself, but I really like the idea of taking objects and unilaterally assigning them special powers. I am, however, a tea-geek, and hoping that a good warm tea cozy will make it possible to keep a pot of tea nice and warm through a good long afternoon of maths.

The original tea cozy is crocheted, but I'll make a knitted version instead - because it's symmetric the shaping should be quite simple. And I'll add a little button flap to open and close it, if only because I'm enjoying making buttonholes lately.

And thanks to Cayenne for letting me borrow the idea!
Hugh.

Totoro(s)

2008-01-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

If you've seen the film My Neighbour Totoro, this'll probably make sense to you straight away. It's a wonderful film by Hayao Miyazaki, about two young girls living in the countryside for the first time. It's quite hard to explain why the film is so much fun, but 'enchanting' is very much the right word for it.
It features three woodland spirit... things of different sizes. The largest of these is Totoro, although I'm not sure if that's a name or a description, and it may of may not include the two smaller ones, but for my purposes I'm going to call them all Totoro.
So the plan is, I'm going to make a set of the three Totoros. There's a few patterns out there for these, and the best seems to be these ones:

http://heavens-hellcat.livejournal.com/420.html

I haven't been able to find a pattern for all three, and I'm particularly keen that they all be in proportion to each other. That's a little tricky because the big one is a lot bigger than the smallest(about 9 times, by my reckoning), but I think that's reflected really nicely in the animation, the size is reflected in the level of detail, which is something I'm really keen to carry across. And to be honest I just prefer to make my own patterns anyway, it's much more fun.

So that's the plan, I'm gonna knit me a family of Totoros. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with them, so if anyone has ideas, or would be keen to provide a loving home to a family of troll-thingies...?

Hugh.

Updates

2007-12-18T03:15:00.000-08:00

Hey!
So, it's been pointed out to me that I haven't updated this for quite a while now - this doesn't mean that I've forgotten about this, just that I haven't finished any geeky knitting for a little while. Since I'm going away for christmas and won't be internetting much, it seemed like a idea to write some project updates, a kind of "geeky things you'll be seeing in the new year" :o)

So first exciting project - a few weeks ago I gave a talk to the maths department about the relationships between geometry and knitting, specifically focussing on how you might construct a knitting pattern for a Riemannian surface. I'm planning to post the slides and pass them around to people who I think might be interested, but first I want to make a few modifications. For copyright reasons I'll need to re-do some of the images, and I'll see if I can change some of the language to make it more accesible to a slighlty less mathematical audience.

The feminist torus is making good progress too - I've got all the maths sorted out, and I know how it's all going to work. It's on hold just at the minute awaiting more yarn. It's all shaping all quite well, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it'll turn out.
Slight problem is that I'm really going to need to make a second version before I'm clear enough on what I did to actually write down a pattern for it. And I'd really like to write it out, I'm hoping quite a few people would be keen to make one. So, I need to find a second person who would appreciate the idea of cute cuddly feminism to make the second one for...?

The cheshire cat scarf is well under way - the first cat is done, and I'm working away on the middle section, which is just plain stripes. This is a good project to do while watching tv or reading, so I think I'll get a lot of it done over christmas. Hopefully that means I'll be good and warm once I get back to the frozen north :o)

Maxwell's cardigan is making rapid progress too. I currently have the two front pieces and half a sleeve done. Since this is also mostly nice and simple, with only a little shaping of edges to contend with it's coming along pretty fast. It helps that the yarn is absolutely lovely to feel, so I'm extra keen to knit it :o)
The equation part is still to come, so I guess it'll slow down a little then, but I tend to find stranding quite addictive, so I doubt that'll be much of a problem. Since I'm planning on knitting this on the train, I'm hoping to get a lot of it done on the trip.

And finally, one finished item. This isn't really geeky, it's a baby cardigan which is on it's way to my soon-to-be-nephew/nieceling:

But I like to think awful, awful jokes are a kind of geekery of their own, so here goes:

What kind of a key cannot open a lock?
A monkey in an enormous cardigan.
(courtesy of Bob)

Happy christmas, everyone!
Hugh.

Knitting safari

2007-11-13T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hey!
After a short break while I was avoiding doing the sewing up, the safari animals are now done!
I'm very happy with how the colouring turned out, I think they're very recognisable. I decided I was doing the stranding wrong though, I think you should really carry the yarn to the end of the row each time, even where the colour stops earlier, this seems to make the tension more even.

I'm very happy too with how the shaping turned out, they're nice and simple but I think they look a lot like the animals they're supposed to be. Particular thanks to Cathy for the suggestion of using drinking straws in the legs and neck of the giraffe - they make it good and strong while still being child-friendly.
I'm really pleased with their little faces too - I'm told safety eyes might not be too good for very small children, so they're just a couple of sewn stitches, but I think they work really well, and they both come out looking very cute.

The zebra, unfortunately, didn't go so well. I made a couple of attempts at getting the colour pattern right, but I wasn't happy with how either came out, the patterns in the stripes are just too subtle to knit well. And then I decided I didn't particularly like the shaping either. After the fun with the cow patterns I'm a bit wary of trying to put in a very prominent neck, and that's really a big feature of zebras. So the zebra is on hold just now. Maybe I'll come back to it when I'm feeling in need of a challenge, or maybe I'll just let it go.

More knitting in the near future!
Hugh.

Knitting week

2007-10-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hi people!
Last week (13-20/10) was national knitting week, and to celebrate the folks at City Knitty decided to do some knitting for charity. After some discussion we decided to knit for the premature babies wing at our local maternity hospital. After discussing this with them, they told us what they'd really like would be some knitted toys - apparently they like to give presents to the little babies who're there over christmas.

Happily I just happened to have a toy-making project on hold which seemed perfect for the occasion. The idea was to make a collection of safari animals in the style of the lions, but using stranded knitting to give them patterns. I decided the best animals for this would be a tiger, a giraffe and a zebra. Unfortunately, in order to be baby-safe I won't be able to reinforce the giraffe and zebra legs, so there's no way they'll be able to stand up, but I figure they could always be suspended as some kind of mobile.
But I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out. I get the impression texture plays a really big part in how people identify animals so I'm curious how easily recognisable they'll be.

Hugh :o).

Kitty knitty

2007-10-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

Hi people!
I've been thinking of new things to do with shadow knitting. One way I'm interested in is mixing colourwork with shadow knitting to overlay patterns(Bob is doing some similar experiments).
So I was fascinated when I saw these Chesire cat socks - if you remember Alice in Wonderland, when the Cheshire cat disappears, it's grin stays behind:

`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin,
which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice;
`but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever
saw in my life!'

So I'd like to portray this using shadow knitting. I'll make a cat design in shadow knitting, then I'll add the mouth with coloured yarn. Because the grin will be worked across the stripes, it will be visible from all angles, whereas the cat will be made up of raised and lowered stripes it'll only show up from some. The cat design will need to be very simple, shadow knitting isn't well suited to intricate detail, so it'll just be a very simple cartoony cat's face.
And I'll make this into a scarf. I haven't made a scarf for ages! I'll need to see what nice scarf yarn I can find which would suit this.

Hugh.

(Finally) finished Cthulhu mittens

2007-09-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Cthulhu mittens have been languishing in the sewing up phase for far too long now- I'd finished the first one, finished the second one, decided the first one needed the seams redoing, and got half way through taking it apart, but hadn't got around to putting it back together.
I decided they'd make a good birthday present for my little brother, which added a little more urgency to matters, and they finally got done today. A little late, but hey. So here they are in all their runic glory.
I didn't get around to duplicate stitching the red highlights I was thinking of adding, which is a bit of a shame. I'm not sure if they'd've worked, but I would have liked to try it and see.

I think the seams on the two mittens don't quite match up, the top of the right one seems slightly rounder to me. I think that might be because I started sewing at the top on that one and on the bottom on the other. Hopefully that doesn't show too much. I'm also a little concerned that with the seams placed as they are the mittens don't quite lie flat when you take them off, the seams aren't quite at the sides.

Still, I'm very happy with them- hope little brother is too!
Hugh.

Super-bonus lion

2007-09-22T12:29:00.001-07:00

So, here we have one more lion. It's just the same as the earlier ones, except the brown yarn is a little darker.
When the earlier lions were visiting church a while back, a teacher friend asked if it might be possible to get one of them to use in her school, she thought the children would be very keen on them. Since the children are way too young to deal with sexuality issues, it wouldn't be able to be explicitly gay, which I thought would be a bit of a shame since that was a lot of the point of them. It'd also mean breaking up the pride.
But still, this seemed like a fantastic thing to be able to contribute to, so I decided the best thing to do would be to make an extra lion for her. This one isn't gay, or at least it doesn't have any particular orientation- he's just a fun rainbow-coloured lion. He's also probably going to be named Parsley(after the very friendly lion from "the herbs").

In other lion news, the lion and the lamb are happily settled with their new owners, and they're named Leo and Larry respectively.
I'm still on the look out for things to do with the gay pride lions too...

Hugh.

Sitty knitty(II)

2007-08-30T05:33:00.001-07:00

More cows!
Here's the second, sitting, cow. The body is the same as the first one, the legs are the only major change. It took several attempts and a suprising amount of cow-research to come up with a leg shape I was happy with. Apparently when cows sit, they fold they took their hooves up underneath them, rather like cats do. I found it was very hard to come up with a geometrically accurate way to make this shape, so in the end I settled for making the foot part nice and thin and folding it. It's not a very elegant solution, but I didn't want to overcomplicate a tiny detail unnecessarily.

So there they are! What do you think, do they look cow-like? I'm not entirely sure. I've had suggestions of mouse, pig and hippo.
Also, the sitting cow has smaller horns than the standing one. This is because she's going to be turned into a female cow at some point, so they can be a little cow-couple. Since this phase of the project was aimed towards writing a pattern, that'll be a project for the future though.

Hugh.

Sitty knitty(I)

2007-08-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here we have the completed lion and lamb! I'm not sure how well either one does by itself, but they make a nice pair. Being so different kinda draws attention away from some of the imperfections.
The lamb's fleece is done in fur- or loop-stitch. I think it could have done with being a bit thicker, and the yarn doesn't bend well so they stand up a lot. Interestingly, because the surface is curved outwards the loops end up more spaced than they would normally be, so some modifying of the fur-stitch pattern may be in order.
His eyes look a bit crazy, particularly from head on, because the pupils point sideways. That's kinda deliberate, sheep's eyes point sideways naturally, but I think it would have been better to space the eyes a bit wider too. The lamb has little ears too, which I really like. They don't show up so well in this picture. Should probably take more pictures.

So yay, they're done, they're cute, and they're sitting down* :o)
More sitting down* animals to follow in the near future!
Hugh.

* - Terry Wogan points out(at some length) that "sitting" is the action, like "taking a seat", strictly speaking they are *sat* down.

Nativity cow

2007-08-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

There's a cool story behind this one - one of my City Knitty friends has a church-friend who has been knitting a nativity scene for years and years. Apparently when she became Christian, she resolved to knit a nativity scene, and she's been working away at it ever since, making a figure each year. The one figure she needs to complete the set is the cow, but she's never been able to find a pattern for one, and she's getting older now, and knitting is getter harder for her. So having found I like to design stuffed animals, said friend asked me if I could write a pattern for her to knit.

So here we go, my first attempt at a cow. The yarn is a bit lighter than would be ideal, but this was just the only brown yarn I had to hand, and since it's just a test piece I wasn't too concerned with the colour. I am assured however that there are cows that come in this colour.
The body and head are all worked in one piece, which folds up to make the complete shape. The legs are added seperately and have little pieces of wire to hold them up. It's a fun way to make shapes, and could be taken to more extreme versions, you could potentially make the entire thing, including legs, ears, tail and horns in one piece if you were that way inclined.
The big thing is that apparently nativity cows tend to be lying down. So for the second attempt, I'll try to find some way of rearranging the legs into a sitting position. I'm not quite sure how to do this, particularly the folded knee joints will be a bit tricky. Then since the second cow is really only being made to test the legs, I'll add some modifications to make it into a female cow, and the two test versions will go together as a nice cow-couple.

And yes, I realise that strictly speaking "cow" means female and this is a bull. I prefer to use "cow" as a general term, kinda like "man" and "mankind" isn't always gender-specific.

Graduation torus

2007-08-06T04:15:00.000-07:00

This was a bit of a quick project since it had a pretty short deadline(and wasn't too complicated), so it's only getting one post.
It's for a maths-studying friend who is completing his PhD soon(his viva is this thursday). So I made him a torus wearing a little mortarboard. We don't actually wear mortarboards at our graduations here at the university of Edinburgh, but hey.
There's some maths geekery behind this too, the torus is a manifold, which means that if you look at it in small enough pieces, it looks just like flat space. It's also a Lie group, but that's a little harder to explain. The cool thing about manifolds is you can do calculus on them, which you do by approximating them by planes one point at a time. So the mortarboard part is supposed to be the tangent plane at a point. The 'tassels' are supposed to represent a basis of this tangent space, which is to say they give the directions you can move along the surface. For Lie groups the tangent space is particularly useful because in some sense you only need to look at one of them rather than having one for each point.

Knitwise, I think the only tricky part was making the board. It has a piece of cardboard inside to make it nice and flat. I'd hoped to make this removable so it could be easily replaced if it got bent, but in the end the stocking stitch made the opening hang open too much, so I had to sew it closed. There might have been a nicer way to do this with tassels and eyelets.

Completed Transformer mittens

2007-08-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

I knit them in the round, so there are no seams, and the logos are done in intarsia. I was expected the intarsia in the round to be complicated, but it's really suprisingly simple. There was a bit of.. confusion, and the left hand one ended up being a bit smaller than the right, but hopefully that won't be too noticeable. I'm not entirely happy with the top of the autobot logo, I think the black crest is way too big, and it would probably be better to have left this out or at least have made it a lot smaller. The decepticon one I'm very happy with though.

A couple of knitting points:

First, intarsia in the round. I think people make this out to be quite a bit more complicated than it is, and the dpns particularly help a lot. If you put all the stitches for one intarsia block on one needle, then all you need to do it knit up to that needle, twist the yarns together as you would in normal intarsia, then purl back to the other end. When you get there, knit along that needle until your yarns are back together, twist, and continue. If your intarsia bit isn't a rectangle, once you get the two yarns together, slip the appropriate number of stitches from the intarsia needle onto the adjacent ones, and carry on. Essentially you're just knitting two flat pieces and twisting the yarns at the end of each row to hold them together. I suppose it might be a little trickier if you had a lot of different intarsia blocks.

Second, the mixed stranded-intarsia thing. For the purposes of these mittens, the logo forms one block with two yarns worked as stranded knitting, and the rest is the other. If you're doing this, I think you need to be very careful about how tightly you work the floats, particularly on the turns. (You can see me doing this wrong at the top of the autobot logo) I found working the other block first each time helped a lot with this, but otherwise I'd just try to leave the extra thread very loose. Maybe this is just me knitting too tightly though.

Third, there's a purl row just above the cuff to form a border, which is immediately followed by some increases for the wrist. I think this makes the border a little uneven, and with hindsight I would have put in a couple of plain rows between the two. I suspect not putting shaping too close to borders, where there are straight lines to disrupt, might be a good general principle.

Anyway, I'm very happy with them, and am trying to think of excuses for more mittens so I can play with this more :o) The mittens will be on their way to their new home sometime in the next couple of days.
Hope you like them!
Hugh.

Warning - Not Safe For Adam

2007-07-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

We at City Knitty have been talking about getting involved in knitting for premature babies for quite a while, and here is my first attempt!
The idea is that when people have premature babies, they don't generally have any baby clothes in the right sizes - neonatal units like to keep a supply of tiny baby clothes which they can give to them until their babies grow a bit. Unfortunately, between the cleaning costs and the difficulties getting them back, they really can't reuse them, so they tend to get through them quite fast. One way to solve this problem is if you have a bunch of friendly knitters who keep them stocked up!

This is knitted from the Bliss pattern for 3-5 lb size. I'm amazed how tiny it is, but I guess that's just how babies are.

And as you can see, I found a way to work a geek angle into this too :o)
Hugh.

The lion and the lamb

2007-07-24T02:57:00.000-07:00

This project follows on from the lions - having seen me knitting some of the pieces of the lions, one of my friends at church suggested that I could make a lamb lying down with a lamb - this comes from a bible quote:
"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them."(Isaiah 11:6)
(I don't know why the lamb and the lion tend to get singled out from that, maybe it's just cos they tend to be very symbolic animals? Of course it's possible it's just a quote from somewhere else and I've misunderstood.)
So I thought it'd be nice to make a lion and lamb for her. The lion will use the same pattern as the gay pride lions, although this time the mane and the tail will be a sensible brown colour, and I'll need to rework the legs to make it lie down. (I should say thanks to Miya for suggesting this, I wasn't too keen on the idea at the time but thinking about it more it does seem pretty cool :o) ). I'll do this in a way much like turning tiny sock heels. to give me a tube with a hole it one side which can then be sewn on to the body.
The lamb will have the same pattern as the lion, but I'd like to knit it with loops coming off the body to make the fleecy parts(kinda like towels do?). I'm not sure how you do that yet, but I'm assured it is possible.

Hugh.

The Gay Pride

2007-07-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well, the lions are all done and finished now. They could possibly have their manes trimmed to a more mane-like shape, but I'm very happy with them just now and not wanting to risk it. Or to change anything about them :o).

I still don't know what to do with them- the plan is still to grab some campaigny people and see if they could use them, but I'm not really sure who to ask. Another possibility is to just find someone who would like them and make them a present. A few people have asked me about getting one of them, but I'd prefer not to break up the pride. The 'Pride' thing doesn't make sense otherwise, and I think a lot of the cuteness comes from seeing them all together.

But yes, if anyone has any suggestions of things I could do with them it'd be very helpful. Or suggestions of people who might be able to help, that would be good too. Fortunately, I'm quite happy playing with them myself in the meantime :o)

Hugh.

Feminist torus

2007-07-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

Hey!
Well, I've got a couple of projects I'm aiming to start fairly soon(as well as a couple about to finish), so I'll be blogging them up in the near future.
First up - another torus! The plan is to knit a stuffed cuddly version of the female sign thingy. For feminism reasons, I think this needs to be blood red. I'm not sure if it should have googly eyes yet, or if it does, where they should be. Suggestions so far are they could go on the top of the ring part, or the bottom of the ring, or possibly on the cross bar part. I'm currently planning to make it, then try them in different places and see how it looks. Of course, googly eyes can make anything cute, and I do like the idea of cuddly cute feminism :o)

Knitting-wise, the plan is to do this all by holding and picking up stitches, and hopefully without any seams - I'll knit the torus part in the round, holding stitches around the circular hole for the vertical bar as I go, then grafting the end together. Then pick up the held stitches and knit the bar, holding stitches for the two horizontal parts. I'll probably add some curtain wire to the two bars to make them hold their shape better too.
I haven't really knitted anything this way before, so this is quite experimental and hopefully will be educational.

This is planned as a present for a feminist friend - yay to her :o)
Hugh.

Exciting Cthulhu news!

2007-07-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

Remember the Cthulhu mittens?
A couple of people asked me about making their own, and I finally got around to writing up the pattern properly. I checked with the nice people at Chaosium(since the artwork is borrowed from them) and they've said it's ok for me to distribute this pattern freely. They also called my knitting 'nefarious', which I much approve of :o).
So, if anyone is keen to give these a try, leave me a message and I'll sort out sending you a pattern.

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

First lion

2007-07-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the first lion, complete and ready to go! I spent quite a while fiddling with the eyes, and while they aren't really right I'm convinced that this is as good as I can get them. He does look kinda shocked...
I'm not sure how recognisably lion-ish he is - I thought he was, but showing him to people has led to some other suggestions. He still needs a haircut though, so I'm hoping that when it's more mane-shaped he'll be more easier to recognise.
I can't wait to see how they all look together!
Hugh.

Transformers

2007-07-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, attempts at transformer swatches! The first photo is the stranded version - I decided that the cable version wasn't really working, and this is probably the right way to go about it. I'm reasonably pleased with how this turned out, although I'll need to check it with my local Transformer-geek to see if it needs any revising. It's probably a bit taller and thinner than it should be.
There's a couple of mistakes in the eyebrows because the chart I was working from wasn't clear enough about what to do with the WS rows. Looking at the size of this motif I've decided this would go well on a pair of gloves - then I can have the Autobot logo(this one) on one glove and the Decepticon one on the other.

This is the cable version. I'd really like to do more of this kind of thing, but I think I need to do a lot more playing to work out some details. Couple of things that I need to fix:
(i) the cables are raised, but where they need to make a horizontal edge the reverse stocking stitch in the background wants to be in front. I was playing with casting off and picking up from the back of the cast off edge(I tried that on the top of the eyes). This is better, but still not ideal.
(ii) cabling the edges of raised blocks makes the edge stand up way too much(as on the eyes and crest here), it'd probably be better to work out some way to work these bits with increases and decreases to avoid this.
(iii) The points of the triangles are very wrong. Because you need to start with one raised stitch that then moves in both directions cables are not good. Just generally making cables come together is tricky because you really have to put one on top of the other.
(iv) Because the cables pull the stitches on either side together, I think you really need to add some increases to make the finished piece end up rectangular.
I think there was a good article about this on Knitty, but I can never find it. Anyway, things to play with sometime! If anyone knows how to deal with these, please let me know!

Hugh.

Bearding the lion

2007-07-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

I'm quite excited about the lion project just now. The current status is that after some fiddling about making it look right I've settled on a pattern I like - it's nice and simple, but I think it keeps enough of the shape to we quite recognisable.

These pictures are from when I was designing the head - the top picture is my first attempt, which I decided was a bit too pointy and snout-like, the second is the one I settled on - it's a little shorter and has a bit more of a round muzzle. In these pictures they're both held together with dpns awaiting stuffing, and of course, the all-important mane. I've done a little of this now, and am very happy with how it's turning out. I decided to tie the threads on the inside, this seemed the quickest way to do this. I nifty side effect is that since the lengths or the threads are only done roughly, once it's all put together I'll need to give it a hair cut :o) That should make it possible to make the different lions quite varied too, so they're not all identical.

More pictures once the first lion is finished!
Hugh.

Lions

2007-06-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hi people.
So, this weekend Edinburgh hosted the Pride Scotia festival, and that forms the inspiration for this project.
The idea is to make a collection of little stuffed lions, and do their manes in rainbow colours.

[ominous pause]

It'll be a gay pride :).

I'm aiming to make the pattern as simple as possible, they should be quite small, and I think a nice simple pattern will be clearer and cuter. Also, if I'm going to make quite a few of them it'd be good for it to be a nice easy thing that doesn't take a lot of concentration. I'm not entirely sure how I'll make the manes, I'm currently thinking I could just sew the threads into the neck and tie them on the inside. That way they'd be good and solidly attached, although it's not the most elegant of solutions.
And I need to find out how specific the colours for the Pride rainbow flag are- I get the impression they're not rigidly defined and anything rainbowish is just as good. I'm also not sure what I'd do with them. I was thinking I could see if the local local LGBT society might be able to find a use to them(or y'know, just enjoy them).

Hooray for pun-geekery!
Hugh.

Transformer logo

2007-06-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

So, Transformers!
A friend of mine is very keen on Transformers, and suggested I might knit something Transformer-based. I decided the autobot logo would be a good motif, being big and clear. I'd like to do this using cables, to give a nice embossed feel to it.

I'm not sure how well it'll work, one problem is that I think the cables will need to be raised, which would make the pattern kind of reversed. If this doesn't work, I think it will be possible to work it in reverse(with the cables lower than the main part) provided the indented parts are thick enough. Failing that, I can always just use colours. I'll have to make a couple of test versions to see how well it shows up.

A bigger problem will be what to do with this motif when it's done. I think it'd work best on a jumper, but other possibilities include a pair of gloves and the front of a hat.

Hugh.

More doilies

2007-06-17T12:52:00.001-07:00

Hey!
So, more doilie progress - I decided having made the first doilie that the needles I was using were too small, making the fabric too dense and detracting from the lace effect. So I made a second doilie to the same pattern, this time with 3.75 needles(and the same 4ply cotton yarn), and here it is!

I think you can really see the difference, the lacey parts seem a less cramped and I much prefer it. I was quite suprised how clumsy I found the bigger needles though, I've been using the 3.25s quite a lot lately and the extra weight makes it a lot harder, especially on the shorter rows towards the middle.

I'm still having the problem with the edge sticking up. On closer inspection I think this is because immediately before the edging, there are five rows of stocking stitch, which makes the edge curl up. I'm not sure what I can do about this - any suggestions?

But yay, more doilies! At this week's City Knitty we were shown some really amazing doilies, crocheted on a tiny tiny hook, so I'm feeling very inspired to try some more of this soon :)

Hugh.

Completed doilie

2007-06-02T01:35:00.001-07:00

Many finished projects this week!
This time, it's the lacy doilie I started last week. (Strictly speaking this is a test piece before I start knitting a really big one, so maybe this doesn't *quite* count as finished?)

This is my attempt at the Flacon pattern from (the awesome) Yarn over, home of the great tagline "If you're looking to make holes in your knitting on purpose, you've come to the right place!".

I knit this with 4ply cotton on 2.75 dpns. I think in the end these needles are really too fine for lace knitting with this yarn, the fabric comes out a little too dense and doesn't quite suit the lacy effect. So my next plan is to do the same again with slightly larger needles. I should also say that I'm loving the cotton yarn, it makes a nice fabric and unpicks very very well. I suspect it would have been a bit of a nightmare trying to unpick mistakes in some of the complicated parts otherwise.

Also, the crocheted edging doesn't seem to have worked quite right, it tends to fold upwards rather than lying flat. The instructions on this were quite vague and took a bit of figuring out(thanks to the folks at City Knitty for sharing their experience on this!), so I'll have to see if I've just done something not quite right there.

Still, it was great fun to knit(a lot faster than I expected too), is a pretty little pattern and is ideal for holding cups of tea.
Hugh.

The completed snail torus

2007-06-01T04:45:00.000-07:00

So, the snail torus is complete! I was a bit unsure about it at first, it looks kinda sloppy to me - the purple torus should probably have been knit tighter, probably stuffed more, and I don't think the shell quite sits straight on to body. But I've been getting some really good reactions to it, so I guess I'm being overly critical.

So, knitting - the three tori are knitted as flat pieces, then one seam is grafted together to make a tube, and the ends of the tube are sewn together. You could do them on circular needles and get rid of this seam too, but I think it's easier this way. I tried to arrange the radii so that the outer radius of each torus is a little bigger than the inner radius of the next one - turns out that isn't necessary at all, the stuffing makes them bulge plenty to hold them in place, and this offset makes them a bit too tight.

The body is knit as a tube, starting from the tail, with short rows to make it curl round. It has a couple of purl stitches each round to make little gutters, and force the tube to be slightly flatter than it would otherwise be - turns out an oval tube is geometrically the same as a round tube, so you can't get this effect just by shaping. They're a little uneven, owing to where the ends of the needles came - will have to bear this in mind when I do texturey things on dpns in future.
There's also a slight issue that I had to hastily improvise a grafted seam for the mouth, otherwise my tube wouldn't have left any openings for me to use to stuff it. I like how that turned out though, it gives it an odd expression which reminds me of the muppets when they do their 'shocked' look.

But yay, it's done, it's cute, and people seem to really like it :o)
Hugh.

Now, aren't you glad I got through all of that without a "nine inch snails" pun?

New home for Torikoma!

2007-06-01T03:20:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on here, but for a while(about a year) I've been playing with making torus-shaped stuffed toys. The torus is a doughnut shape, and is one of the simplest shapes in differential geometry, and illustrates many nice properties.
Most of these pre-date this blog, so they haven't had their own entries. If you're interested, you can find pictures of them in this Tori album on Facebook.

One of these was themed on the Tachikoma robots from Ghost in the Shell. A (fellow maths-geek) friend of mine recently came across the pictures and recognised the Tachikoma, and offered to give it a good home. So here you can see Torikoma, settling into his new place, making friends with the local Ribena berries and conquering a nearby harddrive.

And what better way to relax at the end of a stressful day of moving than to settle down with some knitting*?

While I'm talking tori, I should point out that Miya has been playing with my torus pattern lately, and now has himself a torus-army of his own! His Easter egg nest torus is particularly adorable.

Hugh.

(* - actually I think this photo was with the other torikoma, but I wanted to use it again anyway)