Thursday, October 18, 2012

Getting hooked.

A while ago I met a very interesting woman at a tea party. (Actually, it turned out to be a G&T party, which to my mind is the very best kind of T-party there can possibly be, especially when it is hosted by the lovely Miss WhippingItUp, who has magically transformed herself from a pastry chef into a gardener of note, but. luckily for the rest of us, had not forgotten her patisserie skills, and served the most delicious lemon meringue, berry tart and banana cream tart, which complemented the G&Ts rather well, although you may not think so. Phew, that was a long sentence. but now it is finished, and we can finally move on to topic of this post).

The interesting woman (who, by the way, knits the most amazing tea cozies) , told me about this project. You can watch the TED video here. Wow - maths and crochet! Who would have thought that you could illustrate geometric hyperbolic space with a piece of crochet? And create a coral reef along the way?

I just had to try it out. (I do like a bit of maths every now and then to liven things up.) And I can think of many lovely applications, some functional, and some purely artistic.

























Pink Hyperbolic Space (wool, crochet)

Never thought maths could be interesting, did you? And while I have you hooked (no pun intended), here is a very interesting and accessible article on maths in the NYT . Go on, read the whole series - you know you want to!

2 comments:

Leenie said...

I love TED talks. I just finished watching that one. How enlightening
and exciting. I agree, hands on play teaches so much more than abstract thinking. Love your idea of working with soft "coral". Real coral is so beautiful and needs all the help it can get.

krisha said...

Love this! thank you for sharing!
How is sprong coming in your neck of the woods? Is everything in bloom?
K