In lieu of I wrote a letter to my sister, put the summer bulbs to bed in a cosy box of vermiculite, went to the store to replenish Callie's special cat food treat (of which she gets one teaspoon a day) and settled down this afternoon to do a bit of spinning.
So I detached some of the roving from that lovely pink braid I bought at the newly discovered wool shop and teased it out into an airy cloud, - then into yard long bits with all the yarn going one way, lengthwise, and then I started to spin. Not perfectly, - far from it. The technique was slow in coming back to me and when I tried a long draw, which I used to love, I found the thread getting skinnier and skinnier. Back to a short draw, and a few lumps and bumps, but here is what I did on the bobbin.
Sallie of A Full Time Life was asking about instructions for a Moebius Scarf, and here is one below.
About the instructions, I must confess that I don't follow those terribly complicated ones that use a circular needle, - or even two circular needles. When I first read about a Moebius Scarf in 'Knitting Around' by Elizabeth Zimmerman she explained the basics by describing a "rather long skinny piece of paper, given one twist and stuck together to form the Moebius Ring; a ring with one surface and one edge.
I am not a purist who must make it seamless, - I am very prosaic and just knit that long skinny rectangle, give it a twist and then sew the ends together, - carefully.
Here is the one I am making now, knitting that lovely ball of wool in garter stitch for as many inches as I need to go around the neck once, loosely and comfortably, - or twice for extra warmth if the 195 m in the ball will stretch that far. A piece of cake - perfect for mindless knitting if your hands demand to be busy.......
If you don't knit but you are still interested in the Moebius, and especially if you are interested in Topology, which "concerns itself with vast spaces in contrast to specific sizes and shapes of the Euclidean configurations, and uses more than the three dimensions of Euclid. To study these multidimensional spaces they have to be classified, and this requires an object to compare them to. This object has to have the unique property of having only ONE surface, and this need was filled by the invention of the great Mathematician/Topologist, August Ferdinand Moebius (1790-1868". pge 53, Knitting Around by Elizabeth Zimmerman.
And that is quite possibly more than you wanted to know, Sallie, but who knows how many Dimensions the future holds for us....
3 comments:
I am in awe of anyone who can spin, even inexpertly. Moebius strips, I remember from watching children's TV nearly half a century ago, have very interesting properties. I recall that if you draw a line down the centre of the strip it eventually joins up with itself, having made a line on both sides of the paper. If you then take scissors and cut along the line you get two interlinked circles. Don't try this with a knitted scarf!
I love that multi coloured wool Hildred.
Goodness! Thank you Hildred...it may not be more information than I wanted, but it is more than I can handle all at once (I will come back and think about it some more later). I had heard vaguely of a Mobius Strip, but couldn't quite imagine how you would do such a scarf. But how lovely!
(I don't knit... or do much of anything ... but I do admire!
Post a Comment