It's Just Yarn-Overs

So this thing happened a while ago. I was working on the baby blanket for Hannah, and I showed it to Meghan (my therapist). She was kind of floored by it. I was like, "Well, you just go around and around on double-pointed needles, and these holes here are how you add stitches to it when you switch needles. Then later you add more stitches, and that makes it ruffle-y. It's just yarn-overs." She told me that she couldn't knit, and I didn't believe her. I amended it to "You don't know how to knit yet."

Or like another time Noah asked me if I built bikes - I've got three bikes that I ride (one for commuting, one for touring, and one for going fast) and I've put just about every part of each one where it is myself, including installing two out of three headsets and lacing and truing four of my six wheels. I told Noah no I don't build bikes, because I don't know how to weld - I don't build frames.

I have this kind of huge tendency to think that anybody else could be coming up with and doing the same things that I do. Like here's another story - the other day Scott was telling me about James Turrell, who bought himself a crater in New Mexico and has been transforming the shape of it with bulldozers so that when you're in the bottom of it it feels like the sky is upside down. Through a random coincidence I already knew about this - an ex went to school with his daughter, who got married in the crater. But what I thought was, "Oh, that's funny, I know another story about an artist with a crater." Like somehow my assumption was that a whole bunch of artists had craters - New Mexico must be full of them. Oh, that Spiral Jetty!

In a sense, it is just yarn-overs. I'm attracted to simple, do-able, low-talent, low-tech, often economically impossible forms of art-making. Knitting is really simple and repetitive, which is part of why it's so great. Just about anybody with a ton of time on their hands who can knit in the round can follow the pattern to make the anemone blanket - even the fringey bits are just cast-on-bind-off.

But also obviously the stuff I do is way more than yarn-overs. I've been thinking a lot lately about where this all comes from - the it's-just-yarn-overs thing touches down all over the place in my life, like punk rock, my family, my super-awesome grandpa, and my ideas about what art is what I want to use it for and why I do all this crafty, arty, fixit stuff in the first place.

This is gonna be super long, so I'll stop here for now, but I'm gonna keep poking at it and see what happens. Stay tuned.

(Illustration from howstuffworks.com. Go there and learn all about increases.)

Dog Drawings against Breast Cancer!

Hey check this out - my friend the brilliant and talented Maria Sputnik is offering custom schwag to anyone who donates to support my breast cancer ride! She says -

if you donate money, I will draw a picture of your dog! And if you don't HAVE a dog, I'll draw a picture of what your dog would look like if you DID have one.

She started doing this for another friend who's doing a 39-mile breast cancer walk in Colorado, and she's generously offered to extend the favor to my readers here, too! Here are some of her awesome drawings:

You can see she's mad talented - can you guess who asked her for a yeti?

If you want to play along too, here's how:

make a donation of any size on my donation page to support Tour de Pink.

Then leave a comment on Maria Sputnik's lj page telling her what kind of drawing you want.

Thanks, Maria! Thanks, everybody!

A Big Bike Ride Against Breast Cancer

Hi everybody -

This October, I'll be participating in the Tour de Pink, a 200-mile charity bike ride the whole way from Hershey, Pennsylvania to New York City to raise money for the Young Survival Coalition.

Those of you who know me pretty well know that I would probably find it easier to ride all 200 miles uphill and in the rain than hitting up all my friends, family, co-workers and blog readers for donations. But here goes: Breast cancer stinks. My grandma had it, my mom has had it, three of my five aunts have had to deal with it. Like everybody else, I hope for a time when my nieces and nephews won't have to worry about breast cancer. So please consider supporting me - you can make a donation here.

The ride benefits the Young Survival Coalition, the only international, non-profit network of breast cancer survivors and supporters dedicated to the concerns and issues that are unique to young women and breast cancer. The event costs are underwritten by the corporate sponsors, so anything you give will go straight to supporting the Coalition's vital work.
Thanks, and all the best!

Wheee!

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


Thanks, Abbie! SO happy!

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

Hyperbolic Knitting (Fuzzy Math)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have fun with it!

Izanami and Izanagi

Here's a story for the equinox. If you know your Inanna, Ninshubur, Persephone, Hermes, Orpheus and Eurydice, or even Lot and LotsWife, this should sound kinda familiar. This one's from Japan - it's at the start of the Kojiki and the Nihongi.

It was the beginning of the world, and nobody was around except Izanami and Izanagi. They were hot for each other, so they got it on. "Wow, that was great!" said Izanami. "Um, yeah it was!" said Izanagi.

Soon Izanami was pregnant. When the baby came, it was a slimy eel-baby. They put the eel baby in a boat and cast it out to sea, and went to ask the gods what was going on. "Oh," the gods said. "The man is supposed to be the first one to talk. That's why you had an eel baby."

"Oh, right!" Izanami and Izanagi said. "Sexism! Well, whatever." They had lots more sex, and each time Izanagi made sure to talk a lot, and they had lots and lots of babies. They gave birth to the islands of Japan, and mountains and streams and breezes and rivers and the sun and the sky and the moon, and animals and trees and people. They kept on loving each other more and more, and they were really, really happy. Then Izanami gave birth to fire. Fire was too hot, and Izanami burned to death.

Izanagi killed the fire baby, and set off for the land of Yomi, to bring Izanami back.

The land of Yomi was the underworld, but it was also just a place. Izanagi didn't have to fight any dragons or trick any sphinxes or take off all his clothes to get there, he just showed up. He found Izanami, who was sitting in the dark. "Oh, there you are," Izanami said. "You've come too late. I've already eaten the food."

"PLEASE come back with me," Izanagi said, "I miss you SO MUCH."

"Okay, I'll come back with you," Izanami said, "We can leave tomorrow morning. But you have to promise not to look at me while I'm sleeping."

"I promise," said Izanagi, not meaning it. In the night, he lit a match and looked at Izanami. Izanami was a rotting corpse.

"Holy shit!" cried Izanagi, and took off running. "Don't you dare leave me now!" cried Izanami, and took off after him.

Izanami chased Izanagi all over the place, but Izanagi always got away. Finally Izanagi wedged a giant boulder in a mountain pass, and Izanami couldn't get through. "If you don't let me out," Izanami screamed, "I'll kill a thousand people every day."

"Well, fine then," said Izanagi, "I'll just give birth to fifteen hundred more."

Floppy Math

Because a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Happy Pi Day everybody!

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

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

Oh, and happy White Day, too!