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Thursday 2 December 2010

Mathematically Patterned

Have been working on a scarf design all day and have been playing with the idea of working it along certain mathematical patterns. Anyone who's ever read the "Da Vinci Code" is probably pretty familiar with the Fibonacci sequence and its also surprising how often I've seen it come up in knitting magazines when discussing colour work. So its probably no surprise that I started playing with it as an idea. If you use a number pattern then you can apparently get away with all sorts of irregular striped patterns without them looking odd. This is especially true of Fibonacci numbers as they are replicated in nature, so our eye is used to them and is designed to find beauty in them.

I got to playing with ideas and my first thought was to knit up a simple striped pattern as follows:
  • Row 1 -      colour A -1
  • Row2         Colour B -1
  • Rows 3 - 4  Colour C -2
  • Rows 5-7    colour B -3
  • Rows 8 -12 Colour C - 5 and so on up to a block of 21 rows and then reverse the pattern
But I also wanted to work in some cables - and wondered if I could do c2 F for 2 row bands, C3B for 3 row bands etc but the result was scrappy and I was unhappy with the result.
So then I thought about lace and cables - a cable band alternating with a garter st lace band but again it just didn't seem to work out. Maybe I'm too picky but it seemed that combining complex colour banding and complex patterns just made it all too disjointed and busy. So after unripping it again I chose 2 numbers from the sequence and a random number devised a pattern that seems to work:

StSt 9 sts, moss 3, StSt 9, then on 16th row (with K rows as evens)  C9f, moss 3, C9B, work another 16 rows even and C9B, moss 3, C9F. It seems to sit together well but would welcome some thoughts please :-)






I love the way the cables actually give the scarf a sinuous form almost like an hour glass figure too! A great way to show off your curves!

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