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Knitting and Math Combine in Wooly Thoughts

October 21, 2016 by Sarah White

Meet the knitting mathematicians who explore mathematical concepts in knitting and crochet.I came across this article from the Guardian recently about a husband and wife who explore math-inspired knitting.

Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer have made more than 90 math-inspired afghans, as well as other expressions of mathematical ideas in knitting and crochet.

They share their creations at Wooly Thoughts, and their work has been featured at the Science Museum in London, among other places.

The pieces are beautiful even if you don’t know the meaning behind them, and the couple have used them to help illustrate and talk about mathematical concepts in classrooms, where everyone can look at and talk about the same model.

Their projects aim to take the stigma away from both men knitting and women doing math, and they say they hear a lot more that women say they can’t do math than men say they can’t knit. Here’s hoping projects like this can help put both of those stereotypes to rest.

[Photo by Pat Ashforth, via the Guardian.]

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Comments

  1. Maree says

    October 21, 2016 at 7:32 pm

    I knitted their Ring Road pattern from Ravelry. It was fun to knit and when I had a cylindrical mirror made for it, WOW!!

    Check them out on ravelry.com

Have you read?

Knit a Fish Pouch, for Reasons

I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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