Cool Knitting Tricks: A Brain Wave Scarf

Talk about a personalized project. NeuroKnitting is a company that uses an EEG headset and records brain activity while a person listens to portions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, then takes the resulting activity and incorporates the brain waves into a machine-knit scarf.

Check out the video for more on how its done (and a pretty pairing of Bach and machine knitting).

According to the company’s website:

The knitted garments picture the listener’s affective and cognitive states during the experiment. It is a way of making tangible the implicit the states of users and visualizing them in an original way as a large and personal data footprint.
Neuro Knitting represents a novel way of personal, generative design and fabrication. An approach that brings together affective computing and digital crafts. And thus, it offers new applications and creative thinking to both areas.

The project was a collaboration between artists Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet and phD candidate Sebastian Mealla, whose research focuses on “possible uses of brain and body signals for multimodal interaction.” Not sure what that means, but isn’t this project cool?

[Photo via VisualNews.com.]

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Not too long ago I was seeing a crochet pattern for a glasses holder shaped like a bear all over the Internet. It was super cute, and also useful as a place to put your glasses on your bedside table instead of just throwing them somewhere random.

This project stewed in my brain for a little while and I decided I needed to make a knit version, but I didn’t want to make a bear. If you know anything about me you might know that I’m a cat person, so of course my version had to be a cat.

The base is just a basic little basic worked from the center out to the desired size, then up the sides as long as you want them. Knit some ears and add embellishments to make it whatever kind of animal you want.

The way I figured out to work the base from the center out was to use a crochet cast on, which gives you an easier way to pick up stitches from the back of the cast on than if you worked a more traditional cast on for a knitting project. It’s kind of fun to do things in a different way from time to time.

This little project is adorable if I do say so myself, and even as a plain little basket not made into an animal it’s a cute way to keep your glasses or other little things in one place. I’m tempted to make one for my desk to hold pens or even little little scissors and sewing needles that are always on my desk but somehow always seem to get lost on my desk.

If you need a little holder for your glasses on your table, check out the pattern at Our Daily Craft.

[Photo: Our Daily Craft]

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