Decorate Transreal!

Today was light up day for Decorate Edinburgh and that means a full reveal of the Transreal Fiction  tree I've been decorating with mathematical knitting and crochet. Decorate Edinburgh is a fund raising project for local charities. Around the city, small businesses have given money and received trees to decorate in return. Their Tree Trail leaflet lists all the participants so you can see how they've all gone about decorating Edinburgh for Christmas.

I volunteered for the decorating without much persuasion. This seemed like the perfect reason to finally knit Norah Gaughan's  stellated dodecahedron. After all, her father, Jack Gaughan, illustrated science fiction books and magazines. So now my version of her design top of Transreal Fiction's Christmas tree. (Want to make one too? the pattern is here and it's free www.berroco.com/patterns/celestine).

So much for the tree topper but what about the rest? Well, having started with a mathematical idea I figured I could crochet and knit lots more in the sparkly yarns sitting in my stash for just such a project.  Hyperbolic pseudospheres have been used as baubles since mathematicians started crocheting them so I made some of those.  Strips of hyperbolic surfaces make lovely garlands - a couple of those were made.  Mobius bands are a perennial favourite and so I crocheted a few small ones.  I also found a couple of patterns using modular knitting to make stars by tiling parallelograms and made a whole bunch of them. The most comprehensive web page mathematical knitting information is maintained by sarah-marie belcastro on her Torioidal Snark site.

So far so straight forward.  I went hunting something a bit more obscure and I found the Seifert surface patterns by Hugh Griffiths.  Hugh helped me design a large scale hyperbolic knit when he was a PhD student in Edinburgh a few years ago.  It was exhibited in Transreal Fiction's previous shop. So a Seifert surface was duly knitted.  This one is related to the trefoil knot but there are are others for other knots.  You can find out more about the maths and get Hugh's pattern here.

Once I assembled all the sparkly knitting I realised my subconscious had added another layer of maths to the project for I had made:

8 parallelogram stars

5 hyperbolic baubles

 3 Mobius bands

 2 hyperbolic garlands

1 Seifert surface

 1 stellated dodecahedron

The quantities turned out to be the Fibonacci sequence!  I'm thinking of adding 13 little knitted knots and maybe 21 other things if time allows between now and Christmas. Pop in to Transreal Fiction at 46 Candlemaker Row and see how I've got on...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My very first post!

I've just launched this blog as an experiment. It will be a bit more free form than my website www.madeleineshepherd.co.uk - though I'm not sure what direction it will take. Expect ruminations on photography and textile art and tapirs! The domain name above is the source of the blog's name. My partner decided madeleineshepherd could be read as madeleine's hepherd rather than Madeleine Shepherd. When I figure out what a heperd is I'll post a picture! More to come soonish.
meandering continues here >>

A Bestiary of Authors Again

Image
A Bestiary of Authors Originally uploaded by MadeleineS . A quick snap of my exhibition just before opening - not to a fanfare or a private few(view) but to the general Monday morning in July shoppers. Sunday 29 July was spent getting the final pictures into frames and breaking my nails in the process (girly boo hoo!) then getting everything hung up at Transreal. Mike was great at accurately positioning all the big framed photos like these ones and worked really hard to get it done in some awkward places. There's a real mixture of work on show - fifty two items altogether. If you need a justification for that mixture then it reflects the variety of people in the exhibition as well as the development of my practice over many years. I've been taking photos of SF & F authors for about ten years with no real plan behind it. When we decided to have the exhibition it was a big job just finding all the potential candidates in the archive and picking out a representative selec
meandering continues here >>

Hello again World!

It's been so long since I posted anything here that I think it's fitting to have a change of direction now.  From the beginning of this year there has been a lot going on personally, in the day job and in my studio practice. There's no way I'm going to try and write it all up here.  If you know me in real life you'll know at least some of what I'd write about.  If you don't know then it's OK  because this is the start of something slightly different anyway.  A few weeks ago I decided that my studio should have a name.  After a bit of thought and failed brainstorming I decided to use a name that Mike suggested ages ago, and so Plum and Pepper Studio was born. In the fullness of time there will be a revamped website , a Twitter feed , a Facebook page and a Folksy shop (sorry Etsy the dollat pricing puts me off). June and July should see the bulk of this work done and ready for Coburg House Art Studios Open Event over the first weekend in August.  If yo
meandering continues here >>