What super friends!

Six months ago I only knew 2 people who knit/crochet/spin in Baton Rouge.  Since then I have met this awesome group of ladies who are so much fun, who share so many of my passions!  They are spinners, knitters, crocheters, encouragers, enablers, and givers!

Tuesday night, one lady GAVE me these:

A whole bunch of spinning magazines!!!  She decided spinning isn't for her right now and thought I would like them.  (They aren't helping me be patient to find the perfect wheel!)  There are so many great projects made with handspun yarn. 

Doesn't this scarf show off the yarn great?  Plus the magazine shows 10 others scarfs (all the same pattern) made with different handspun!  (Oh where is my wheel....must spin faster)

and look at these socks!  I don't feel ready to make sock yarn yet, but the pattern looks nice and I know it won't be long.

Then fellow grad student and knitter (she also attends knit night) thought I would like to borrow this book of hers.

Very cool!  My personal favorite are the pillows showing different braid equivalences.  Yep!  real topology in this book (that is what I study in case you were wondering, not braids, but topology)

Now that my reading list is set for a while, I need to figure out how to knit and read at the same time!

A brief math lesson (with knitting content)

****I promise none of the math in this post is scary.  If you have an aversion to math it is okay please keep reading.  No one will get hurt by reading the mathematics that follows...plus you want to see the knitting!****

So I was asked to give a "fun" math talk (20 minutes) to incoming graduate students in a couple of weeks.  So what did I choose?  Geometry of course!  I really like geometry (especially non-Euclidean geometry....not what you learn in high school)  I have found that most grad students have seen very little of this and it is extremely useful (at least in what I do).  

One fun hyperbolic geometry fact:   Triangles must have angle sum (add up the degrees of all three angles) less than 180!  Yes there are geometries where angle sums are more than 180 too! 

So to the knitting.  I thought it would be a shame to give such a talk and not have a nice model of hyperbolic space.  I made a knitted version, but here is also a crocheted version.  (They often look like lettuce because they curve a lot as you go out further)

I made a Pseudosphere (in LSU colors of course) pattern here.  I added a single crocheted border to help the added curling and give it some purple!   I think it will be the perfect model to make my talk more fun!

Not too scary right? :)

There’s no place like home!

Oh it feels so good to be home! I had a super time, but....my brain was full of new things (still is) and I was ready to go home to process it and relax! So let’s see…how was the trip? Super! The conference was super! It was aimed at grad students (meaning I understood a lot—Yeah!) and had problem sessions after every lecture! This really helped me process the new material! It was also in my area, which means most of the talks I found interesting! Not to mention meeting new friends and old “conference” friends. The biggest surprise was seeing Greg—he and I both participated in a 6 week summer program 3 years ago to prepare us for grad school (there were 16 participants) Everyone went to different schools and when the summer was over I wasn’t sure how likely it would be to see these special people again. Then in the hotel lobby I see Greg!!!! In a related area as to what I do! It was fun to relive fun times and get caught up! I also roomed with Diane, a grad student from Michigan (I guess now she has graduated so she is really a postdoc, but…) We met a year ago and also roomed together at a conference last fall, so it was fun to see her again and catch up! Not to mention all the new friends!

Diane, awesome roommate that she was, drove to the conference and was kind enough to take me to a yarn store! Yep, Diane, a non-knitter, humored me in a yarn store! We went to the Knitter’s Mercantile! It was a lovely shop with a good selection (I don’t have much to compare it to, but…they had lots of sock yarn and I was able to feel some yarn I had only read about!) It was a super friendly store too! They let me wander around at my leisure, but were also willing to answer questions! They had comfy furniture where local knitters were knitting and chatting! It was awesome! And I came away with 2 new (to me) sock yarns to try!

1) Online Supersock Cotton in Beach Color—Tracy has highly recommended this yarn for those of us who live in warm weather climates! I’m eager to try it! It feels very soft and I loved the colorway!

2) Trekking pro natura (a wool/soy blend!) I have yet to knit anything with soy and I can’t wait to cast on with it and see what it feels like!

Now what knitting have I been doing? I have two socks in progress!

1) No Purl Monkeys (these were the trip socks because I knew the pattern was super easy to do on the go) I’m using knitpicks gloss in dusk! One down, one to go! Okay, so I didn’t get it completely done on the trip, but today all I’ve done is knit and spend time with my cat who missed me a lot :) DH is away until tomorrow! (Our trips overlapped this time) Needless to say we are both ready to be home, together, with no future trips for a while!

2) Retro Rib Socks. I worked on these before the trip. They are in knitpicks essential also in dusk!

More details on these socks as the second sock (rest of the first) progress!

Happy Pi Day!

Warning****small math digression**** Being March 14th, I can't in good conscience forget to say happy Pi day!!! A day we celebrate the number pi! (not pie) So what is pi? pi=(circumference of circle)/(diameter of circle) . Where circumference is the distance around the outside of a circle and the diameter is the distance across the widest part of the circle. Turns out it is approximately 3.14..... (haha March 14th) It is an irrational number (it can't be written as a nice fraction) and a transcendental number (not the root of a polynomial in rational coefficients---okay if you aren't a math person I realize this one doesn't make sense) So make sure to at least appreciate math today! ****end digression****

So I've been making good progress on my sock! I've turned the heel and finished the gussett! So in no time it will be done. I'm liking the yarn and enjoying this knit! Of course Knox wanted in on the picture! (Right after this she tried to chew my needles---sometimes she starts thinking she rules the house)

Have a super weekend!