Joint Mathematics Meeting Knitting Circle -- report form the field

The mystery about how San Diego local knitting folks, got word on the recent math knitting circle has been solved -- Sarah-Marie not only knows math, she knows Google.

She searched for San Diego Knitting Groups, found my web page and used the contact information to get the word out.


Even though my "homework" wasn't quite finished I took the mad maths project, my knitted cube and a few other bits along to The Marriott last night for the Joint Mathematics Meeting Knitting Circle.

Supposedly there was seating for 45 people, if that was the case then were way more than 45 people in attendance. An alternate theory is that the seating for 45 was way not elbow room suitable.

Everyone was graciously coerced into signing in so to record attendance and justify even bigger facilities at future events and also to get everyone's contact for a mailing list.

It was a very social event with most of the talk being about knitting, crochet and the occasional discussion where math (and especially theoretical math) intersected with craft. It wasn't just academic mathematicians in attendance, there were also spouses/companions who were eager to explore San Diego during their stay so it really wasn't an entirely egghead experience. Not, of course, that a wholly egghead thing would be a bad thing.

There were plenty of socks in progress and sock envy/technical sharing. Honestly, most of the technical discussions seemed to be about knitting techniques. Surprisingly many didn't know about Debbie New so that was a discussion point.

My unfinished homework and my knitted cube got a lot of discussions going and I even ended up giving yet another mini-session on Russian grafting.

The grafting generated almost as much interest as the object and I expect that my blog entry with the mini-tutorial and the Positively Polygonal link on my web page will be seeing some hits and/or links in the days and weeks to come.

I got a look at the book that Sarah-Marie and Carolyn co-edited and it is a very nice looking book. At $30 it is a bit pricey but it's a small mostly academic publisher -- btw, the publisher's web page for the book has an endorsement from Norah Gaughan yet another polygon and math/science obsessed knitter.

Quite a few of the people at the get together were contributors to the book so it was a bit of a big disorganised show and share.

I promised that I would blog about both the event and the in progress and completed homework.

The blog entry is mostly a tarted up version of the posting I sent to my local email list with photos added.

Since Monday night I've grafted the first of the two multi-colour only modules and can see the end, well actually ends, in sight. Each short end extension has two yarn ends to be dealt with given this particular construction choice.

Had I gone with a short row and long row back (girl can't have too many needles) centre out, perimeter in some sewing required construction there would have been fewer ends but more sewing.