[HN Gopher] The Mathematics of Crochet
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The Mathematics of Crochet
Author : edward
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-04-04 17:47 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hellohartblog.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hellohartblog.wordpress.com)
| willvarfar wrote:
| Gorgeous :)
|
| My daughter just choose to do her big final school project on
| hyperbolic geometry, which I suspect was strongly influenced by
| her irrepressible urge to involve crochet in her exam work
| somehow.. So crochet inspires kids to do math. True!
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Indeed. And congrats on your daughter's craftiness and how it
| intersects with math.
|
| Our daughter is not so much into the pure math side but loves
| to do amigurumi, which is really applied 3D modelling. A craft
| show she wants to do later in the year doesn't allow the use of
| other people's models, so she is having to design her own. It's
| so very impressive, and she gets so much joy from seeing kids
| really, really want her work, as they do. It's math, modelling,
| color matching design, and understanding the kinds of threads
| all rolled up into one, so to speak :-)
| krxci wrote:
| Interesting! This reminds me of Knot Theory which is a branch of
| Topology within Mathematics. I don't personally crochet but it
| appears that indeed the knot theory is applicable for crochet as
| well. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
|
| Always amazed at how mathematics' various specialties relate to
| everyday activities in sometimes very subtle ways.
|
| As a tangent -- In studying numerical analysis, I was tested with
| a question of a logistic model applied to rabbit populations (of
| all things). You know, the one that generates bifurcation
| diagrams and is closely associated with chaos theory. Anyway, it
| was just a reminder in the moment about how such seemingly
| familiar phenomena can be explained by these seemingly obscure
| mathematical models (such as numerical differentiation.)
| James_K wrote:
| Knot theory is mostly inapplicable to crochet. The nature of
| how a crochet is made, by curling a single unbroken chain
| around itself, means almost all crochet is equivalent to the
| unknot. You can see this in the way crochet unravels all the
| way if you pull on the end of the thread.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > You can see this in the way crochet unravels all the way if
| you pull on the end of the thread.
|
| I decided _not_ to try this out on the crochet cardigan my
| wife is making for me at the moment
| smitty1e wrote:
| Crochet happens in a serial context, the one loop on the hook.
|
| Knitting happens in parallel, with X loops cast on the needle.
| And sometimes (cabling) you execute those threads out of order.
|
| I think that it's fun to HACK (half-ass crochet/knit) when there
| is plenty of time.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Does crochet involve the same type of chain stitch that is
| sometimes used to store long electrical extension cords in a
| tangle-free and easy-to-unravel fashion?
| oldman_peter wrote:
| yes, the chain stitch is often used at the start of a crochet
| project
| jchin wrote:
| If you are in NYC April 19, 2025, Meet the Artist: Topological
| Crochet Artist Shiying Dong might be interesting to you.
| https://momath.org/composite-gallery/meet-the-artist/
|
| MoMath used to run an Online Topological Crochet class. I'm not
| sure if they will be bringing it back, though.
| https://momath.org/onlinecrochet/
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