Moebius knitting: cowl/shawlette
Mar. 7th, 2010 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
knittingbanshee So, on Wednesday I got some Patons Festival yarn, and I started a Moebius cowl/shawlette. I had never done Moebius knitting before, and I have to say it is fun! This one was easy enough to finish in three days, so... if you find it interesting, google around, and you'll find a lot of info on it!
Anyway, in short: Moebius strips have only one surface, twisted upon itself. So Moebius garments are knitted from the middle outwards, and every "row" in fact knits every stitch around the edge (yes, it only has one edge), which in fact adds stitches both sides of the middle. So, if you changed colours halfway through, you would end up with a central section of the initial colour, and two bands along the "sides" of the new colour.
In order to achieve this, Moebius garments are knitted on circular needles. On very long circular needles wrapped around themselves. Which makes for some very funny moments when knitting.
Moebius knitting is, as far as I know, associated with Cat Bordhi, who came up with the idea of the Moebius cast on. It is this weird way of casting on that allows for these garments to be knitted in one piece, without grafting or sewing up of any kind, which would kind of ruin the effect.
Allow me a bit of a geeky digression. I've always find Moebius strips intriguing. Mathematically, they are interesting, and give me a headache every time I try to understand all the details. Artistically, I find them stunning, probably because they feel "ever flowing", if you get what I mean. The fact that Escher used it in some of his drawings, and that they are a well known screensaver, probably has something to do with me liking them.
So, here you can see the results:
General view
Folded
The twist
The pattern
The only problem I have with this style of knitting is that I don't have long enough circular needles. This was knitted on 100cm circular needles, and it came out long enough to wrap around my neck once, but I couldn't knit anything any longer than that. Plus, it can be quite complicated to get the stitches to slide along the needles when the garment gets a bit wide. I think I need to get better (and longer) circular needles, but that seems impossible in this neck of the woods...
Anyway, in short: Moebius strips have only one surface, twisted upon itself. So Moebius garments are knitted from the middle outwards, and every "row" in fact knits every stitch around the edge (yes, it only has one edge), which in fact adds stitches both sides of the middle. So, if you changed colours halfway through, you would end up with a central section of the initial colour, and two bands along the "sides" of the new colour.
In order to achieve this, Moebius garments are knitted on circular needles. On very long circular needles wrapped around themselves. Which makes for some very funny moments when knitting.
Moebius knitting is, as far as I know, associated with Cat Bordhi, who came up with the idea of the Moebius cast on. It is this weird way of casting on that allows for these garments to be knitted in one piece, without grafting or sewing up of any kind, which would kind of ruin the effect.
Allow me a bit of a geeky digression. I've always find Moebius strips intriguing. Mathematically, they are interesting, and give me a headache every time I try to understand all the details. Artistically, I find them stunning, probably because they feel "ever flowing", if you get what I mean. The fact that Escher used it in some of his drawings, and that they are a well known screensaver, probably has something to do with me liking them.
So, here you can see the results:
General view
Folded
The twist
The pattern
The only problem I have with this style of knitting is that I don't have long enough circular needles. This was knitted on 100cm circular needles, and it came out long enough to wrap around my neck once, but I couldn't knit anything any longer than that. Plus, it can be quite complicated to get the stitches to slide along the needles when the garment gets a bit wide. I think I need to get better (and longer) circular needles, but that seems impossible in this neck of the woods...
