Saturday, April 12, 2008
Saturday
I love Saturdays free (i.e. no singing), I get so many fun things done and just float on through the day, no pressure, no deadlines. Today I finished two more knitted spheres, so now I have the three primary colours. Here's a perfectly awful tungsten photo of them:
I'll take better photos of them tomorrow in more natural light, and put them on Ravelry. I knit these while at Jantine's house, where I spent the afternoon keeping her company while she's ill. Her husband Mick cooked us a loverly chicken tikka masala for dinner, and then we ate Tim Tams and watched the New Doctor Who. I can't believe I'm saying this, but my memories of the old Doctor Who were much actually much more believable than the episode I saw tonight, despite the bad 80's special effects and Daleks and all. But I'm willing to suspend judgment until I've seen a few more episodes.
I also have another bone to pick about Holland. Today I bought a new strippenkaart, or "strip card" for the bus. It's a long cardboard card you buy that has 45 strips on it, and each bus journey you take requires a certain number of strips, so the driver just keeps stamping the card on the appropriate places until you have used up all 45, then it's time for a new one. Here's what it looks like:
As you can see it's pretty long, so you usually fold it twice in two to fit it in your wallet. The card is scored between each strip, supposedly to make it easy to fold. But look at what happens when you try to fold it in half:
See? The required fold falls precisely in the middle of strip 13, meaning that the folds provided between the strips are totally useless. So the ends of the card when folded never precisely match up, and you end up with this messy-looking misshapen blob of cardboard in your wallet. I'm sorry, but that is so not me.
Off to church tomorrow, I hope we're singing something nice and old. Gooooo, Tallis!
Random Quote:
"Life is in the details."
-Saffy, from Absolutely Fabulous
I'll take better photos of them tomorrow in more natural light, and put them on Ravelry. I knit these while at Jantine's house, where I spent the afternoon keeping her company while she's ill. Her husband Mick cooked us a loverly chicken tikka masala for dinner, and then we ate Tim Tams and watched the New Doctor Who. I can't believe I'm saying this, but my memories of the old Doctor Who were much actually much more believable than the episode I saw tonight, despite the bad 80's special effects and Daleks and all. But I'm willing to suspend judgment until I've seen a few more episodes.I also have another bone to pick about Holland. Today I bought a new strippenkaart, or "strip card" for the bus. It's a long cardboard card you buy that has 45 strips on it, and each bus journey you take requires a certain number of strips, so the driver just keeps stamping the card on the appropriate places until you have used up all 45, then it's time for a new one. Here's what it looks like:
As you can see it's pretty long, so you usually fold it twice in two to fit it in your wallet. The card is scored between each strip, supposedly to make it easy to fold. But look at what happens when you try to fold it in half:
See? The required fold falls precisely in the middle of strip 13, meaning that the folds provided between the strips are totally useless. So the ends of the card when folded never precisely match up, and you end up with this messy-looking misshapen blob of cardboard in your wallet. I'm sorry, but that is so not me.Off to church tomorrow, I hope we're singing something nice and old. Gooooo, Tallis!
Random Quote:
"Life is in the details."
-Saffy, from Absolutely Fabulous
Labels: knitting, sphere, strippenkaart, the Netherlands
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Eureka!
(Insert Ja'mie voice here): "Um, so anyway, I have the best news..."
... I just got back from Stitch 'n' Bitch, and have made some major progress on a mathematical knitting problem I've been grappling with. Here's the story: just over a year ago, I wanted to knit an armadillo that you could roll up into a ball. Kind of like a popple, but I actually wanted a perfect sphere, not just a teddy with a pouch that you pull over its head. So I started thinking about how you would go about knitting a short-row sphere, i.e. one you could knit that had a resulting split across half the circumference allowing you to place folds in it to create a hemisphere (kind of like a foldable hood on a baby's carriage, or an awning). I found the problem mathematically a little daunting, and so quickly stopped thinking about it (I ended up knitting these dice). Until recently...
At the SnB I've made friends with Jennifer and Lisa, two atmospheric scientists from the Dutch meteorological institute. Needless to say, they're both better than me at maths, and after some brainstorming with Jennifer and her husband last week, tonight I placed the problem before Lisa and - you guessed it - we have a formula! Here's what we came up with:
Basically, what I needed to know was: for each cast-on stitch on the needle, how many rows are needed above and below it to produce a circle of latitude of the right circumference for that position on the sphere's surface? So using trigonometry (plus some white wine and a shot of strong Dutch gin) we figured out a way of calculating each circle of latitude as a function of the position of each stitch on the needle. Then you can figure out the short-row pattern, and knit the sphere in one piece. Phew and yippee at the same time!
Now I just need to get Jennifer to put the formula into an excel sheet for me, and then I'll have a generator that will calculate the pattern for any number of cast-on stitches.
(Insert evil laugh voice here): Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Quote of the day:
A man remarks, in anger torn,
"No rose exists without a thorn."
Yet think of how his anger grows
At all the thorns without a rose!
- Eugen Roth
... I just got back from Stitch 'n' Bitch, and have made some major progress on a mathematical knitting problem I've been grappling with. Here's the story: just over a year ago, I wanted to knit an armadillo that you could roll up into a ball. Kind of like a popple, but I actually wanted a perfect sphere, not just a teddy with a pouch that you pull over its head. So I started thinking about how you would go about knitting a short-row sphere, i.e. one you could knit that had a resulting split across half the circumference allowing you to place folds in it to create a hemisphere (kind of like a foldable hood on a baby's carriage, or an awning). I found the problem mathematically a little daunting, and so quickly stopped thinking about it (I ended up knitting these dice). Until recently...
At the SnB I've made friends with Jennifer and Lisa, two atmospheric scientists from the Dutch meteorological institute. Needless to say, they're both better than me at maths, and after some brainstorming with Jennifer and her husband last week, tonight I placed the problem before Lisa and - you guessed it - we have a formula! Here's what we came up with:
Basically, what I needed to know was: for each cast-on stitch on the needle, how many rows are needed above and below it to produce a circle of latitude of the right circumference for that position on the sphere's surface? So using trigonometry (plus some white wine and a shot of strong Dutch gin) we figured out a way of calculating each circle of latitude as a function of the position of each stitch on the needle. Then you can figure out the short-row pattern, and knit the sphere in one piece. Phew and yippee at the same time!Now I just need to get Jennifer to put the formula into an excel sheet for me, and then I'll have a generator that will calculate the pattern for any number of cast-on stitches.
(Insert evil laugh voice here): Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Quote of the day:
A man remarks, in anger torn,
"No rose exists without a thorn."
Yet think of how his anger grows
At all the thorns without a rose!
- Eugen Roth
Labels: armadillo, knitting, mathematics, sphere, trigonometry
