Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how to create a gradient with evenly-spaced rings. Today's post is related. It still involves center-out circles and geometry. Let's say you want to make a center-out circle. You have a pile of yarn that is all the same color, so you aren't concerned with rings or gradients or color effects. You just want to know how big a circle you can make with that pile of yarn. Is there a quick way to find out without playing yarn chicken? The area of a circle = π r 2 If we draw concentric rings, we can think about how much yarn is in each ring as compared to the whole project. Recall our math:    π 1 2 =    1 π    π 2 2 =    4 π    π 3 2 =    9 π    π 4 2 =   16 π    π 5 2 =   25 π    π 6 2 =   36 π    π 7 2 =   49 π    π 8 2 =   64 π    π 9 2 =   81 π ...

Today I'm writing a little about geometry. Specifically, I want to show you what the r 2 term really does to your yarn usage when you knit (or crochet) a center-out project. If you have ever worked a center-out circle — or a center-out square, or even a neck-down triangular shawl — you may have noticed the project starts off quickly. Those first few rounds or rows just fly off the needles. And then the sprint turns into a run. And the run turns into a jog. And the jog turns into a crawl. And at the end, you find yourself spending an entire evening or more just binding off. If you look at a circle, you can see that each round gets longer. The plodding tempo makes sense without getting into the math specifics. But what I want you to think about today is, "What does this mean for yarn usage?" Let's say you want to knit a center out circle with ten individual skeins of yarn, each a slightly different color along a gradient but all the same yardage. What will happen...

On Saturday, I traveled to the Georgia Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Georgia to tour "Crafting History: Textiles, Metals and Ceramics" at the University of Georgia. The tour led by curator Ashley Callahan was organized by Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance . I hadn't given academic crafting much thought. The exhibit tells the history of craft instruction at UGA. If you attended the university or are familiar with craft history in Georgia, then I think you will enjoy the exhibit even more than I did. Teaching craft is often about innovation. Innovation comes from play. Expanding your skills within your craft often means learning and exploring new techniques. Students and instructors ask, "What if . . . ?" In a group environment, you can crowd-source the solution as different people explore different possibilities. Wiley Devere Sanderson Jr. yardage, no date (1950s?), detail Touring with a group also taps into group knowledge. For example,...