International Women's Day! -- with Cthulhusaurus

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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.