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.

Anomalocaris

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!

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.