Monday miscellany

Italian greyhounds arrive at Crufts (via)

Palimpsest menu board

New concourse at King's Cross station

Phone-stack game - a restaurant competition in which everyone stacks their phones in the middle of the table, and the first person to check their handset must buy dinner for all.

Inside a tailored jacket are 12 different fabrics - interfacing, wadding, bias strips
 - and a variety of hand stitching and hidden machine stitch

The delights of numbers

At university I decided to take a maths course one semester, just to prove I could do it - I'd been a little spooked by maths in high school. It turned out to be a really enjoyable experience, especially as I got a lot of help from this really nice guy ... but that's another story...

Since then, I've forgotten how to do quadratic equations (never mind calculus etc), and completely failed to grasp the way my son was taught maths in junior school. Although I never want to encounter another math problem on an exam, I've been interested in mathematical ideas and history, in a minor sort of way. It helps that Mr.T. (or rather, Dr.T.) knows lots of physics and, having been a teacher, can patiently explain equations and suchlike as the need arises, eg at a fascinating exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2011 called Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere.

He recommended I read this article in the weekend paper, and I am passing on the recommendation. By Simon Singh, it's about how the writers for The Simpsons, many of whom are mathematicians [go figure...], slipped a lot of maths into the show, often but not exclusively as freeze-frame gags, which fly by unnoticed during normal viewing but, paused on playback, offer delights to the cognoscenti.

These figures from a 2006 episode delight maths buffs by representing a perfect number (8128 is the fourth in the list of perfect numbers), a narcissistic number (of which fewer than 100 exist), and a special kind of prime number, named after the 17th century French monk who spotted it.

Coincidentally, last week More or Less on Radio 4 made much of happy numbers, which are much more numerous than, and not to be confused with, perfect numbers. The smallest happy number is 1, because the sum of the square of its digits adds up to 1. As does the sum of the square of the digits of 103 (a happy prime) - 1x1=1 plus 0x0=0 plus 3x3=9 equals 10, then taking the squares of those digits 1x1=1 plus 0x0=0 equals 1.

And what about magic squares? Intriguing, or what! And you can get lots of addition practice with them... This famous one is from Durer's 1514 engraving "Melancholia" -

Back to the article about the Simpsons - it includes the derivation of "Google" - it's a common misspelling of googol, a term suggested by a nine year old for the number 10 to the power of 100 - ie, 1 with 100 zeros after it - a biggish number - and the little boy went on to suggest "googolplex" for an even larger googol. The Google name of the search engine implies that it provides access to vast amounts of information ... which it does...

Finally, if you missed it in the printed article (it's at the end of the online version), a mind-boggling piece of legislative history, written so well that it would be a travesty to paraphrase. It starts by reminding us that pi is an irrational number (its digits go on an on, not repeating the sequence), 3.14159265...

"The Indiana Pi Bill was the brainchild of Edwin J Goodwin, a physician from the town of Solitude in the south-western corner of the state. He had approached the assembly and proposed a bill that focused on his solution to a problem known as "squaring the circle". He seemed oblivious to the fact that this ancient problem had already been proved impossible in 1882. Goodwin's complicated and contradictory "solution" effectively dictated a value for π equal to 3.2. He said that Indiana schools could use his discovery without charge, but that the state and he would share the profits from royalties charged to other schools who wished to adopt a value of 3.2 for π.

Initially, the technical nature of the bill baffled the politicians, who then passed it without any objection. It was then up to the state senate to ratify the bill.

Fortunately, Professor CA Waldo, a mathematician at Indiana's Purdue University, alerted senior politicians to the absurd legislation. This prompted Senator Orrin Hubbell to proclaim: "The Senate might as well try to legislate water to run uphill as to establish mathematical truth by law."

There was a successful motion to indefinitely postpone the passing of the bill, but it still exists in a filing cabinet in the basement of the Indiana statehouse, waiting for a gullible politician to resuscitate it."

Art I like - Aubrey Longley-Cook

One of the 12 embroidered stills that comprise an animated GIF by Aubrey Longley-Cook - see it in action here. He lives in Atlanta and is working on other embroidered animations, sometimes in group collaborations; see them on his blog, http://spoolspectrum.blogspot.co.uk/.

What a map!

For 50 years, Jerry Gretzinger has been creating a map of a fictional world. It now comprises over 2500 sheets of A4 paper, compiled by working for an average of 20 minutes a day over 30 years (there was a time when he set it aside) - a total of 15 working months within his 79 years.

He decides which sheet he'll work on by drawing a card from a specially customised deck. To keep the map from being purely representational he'll add bits and pieces like photographs, tickets, drawings.

You can watch a short video of him talking about the map here, where you'll also find more images - to whet your appetite, here's one closeup, obviously a page under construction -

Follow the map's progress at http://jerrysmap.blogspot.co.uk/

Knitting & Stitching show

Alexandra Palace, from the top of the W3 bus

Such a good day at the Knitting & Stitching show yesterday - much exciting work to see, and many conversations with old friends and new people, and (inevitably) some purchases - mostly thread (can one ever have "enough" thread?). First, a brief glimpse of the myriad shopping opportunities -

Wool yarn and tweed from Jameisons of Shetland, some of the many knitting yarns at the show

Linen threads at the Empress Mills stand

The main highlight for me was the exhibition of Dorothy Caldwell's work - pieces big and small based on her time in the Australian outback and the Canadian north. Simply beautiful - complex without being crowded. I went back several times to look and look.

Large-scale work...

...and intense smaller pieces

Another large one ...

... with a detail

These next three are part of a series of five

The ochre colours of the Australian outback ...

... and lichen and rock colours from the Canadian arctic

Also exciting, James Hunting's subtle, spacious work - and his patient answering of my questions. He works from the back so that the stitches are embedded in the cloth, doesn't frame the work, and it can two days to get the fabric background prepared.  

Two exhibits in the Graduate Showcase particularly caught my eye - Susan Syddall's printed plates and stitched sketchbooks (gorgeous drawing) - and Janet Steer's spun and woven maps with their adventitious red line marking the reconfigured route of her walk; we discovered a mutual adoration of the writing of Tim Ingold on lines and much else. 

Susan Sydall (from her website)

Smaller than a postcard - a little woven walk by Janet Steer that came home with me

Among the rest -

Many lovely pieces by Mandy Patullo

These dolls by Terrie Hitchcock were literally flying off the walls (to new homes)

"Evidence of Bodies" by Susan Chapman

Traditional crewel work - with a bit of the modern sneaking in

Among the Japanese Connections, dyeing and weaving by Yoko Koro - the weaving done from both sides/selvedges

A chance to see Tilleke Schwartz's complex work close up

Arctic animals - stitched down with variants of fly stitch (click on pic for a better look)

Kantha comes to the Arctic  in these ptarmigans

Today I'm taking lots of ideas from the show, and my photos, and those thread purchases, to the Contemporary Quilt weekend up at Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley. It's an impetus to start developing the "map folding" pieces started during the heat press course with Dawn Dupree in the summer.

Beyond the painted dictionary

This concertina book gathers the information about the painted dictionary in one place. It was made by taking photos and captions from the blog and fitting them into a template for having 8 pix on a sheet of paper - this reduced the size of the images, which have a maximum dimension of 600 pixels, so they would print clearly. 

Spot the too-small photo ... it will be replaced

It's only compiled as far as P at the moment; the rest will have to wait till next week.

Could these be joined into some sort of continuous spiral?

"A perfect repository for one of the main tools of daily life"

This needlecase, in the V&A's collection, is dated to 1754.

It's made of silks and satins - dress silks or ribbons, sold by retailers and by pedlars who made regular journey to and from London, where there was a silk-weaving industry in the 18th century (it fell into decline as cheaper fabric was imported from India and China).

The description of the object notes that

"Both practical and decorative needlework played an important part in women's lives at this time; in the management of households and in the making, mending and decoration of clothes and household furnishings. Steel needles were essential equipment, and beautifully crafted and embroidered needle cases were the perfect depository for one of the main tools of daily life."

Poetry Thursday - a sonnet by Edna St Vincent Millay

Only until this cigarette is ended
by Edna St Vincent Millay

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

Millay (1892-1950) wrote about 200 sonnets, all technically excellent. In 1923 she was awarded the Pullitzer Prize, but after her death her reputation waned as free verse became ascendent. Relationships - sharply observed - are her forte.

Further hooking adventures

Looking for a small hooking project - to stretch onto a needlepoint frame, for ease of working - I hit on the idea of insoles for my worn-away sheepskin slippers. (The felt insoles I'd made in the past haven't lasted too well; these may be sturdier.)

Strips of fabric enlarged the sides of the hessian offcut so it could be sewn onto the frame and stretched. The pattern was derived from a bit of faffing around with some paper outside and inside the slippers.

Stitching went quickly - I added the dark line freehand and then some "leaves" and "flowers", filling the background with strips of what used to be a woollen jacket.

When both insoles were hooked, I machine-stitched around the outside, trimmed, and sewed the hessian to the back. It's recommended to add iron-on interfacing to help hold the hessian, but I sewed it fairly thoroughly, and didn't have any interfacing to hand.

In situ, the insoles are quite bulky and have an invigorating massage-like quality as one walks.

(This post is linked to Off the Wall Friday.)

The Micrarium

It blazes with light from a nook in a dark museum (the Grant Museum of Zoology) -

 A place for tiny things.

It contains "some" of the museum's 20,000 microscopic slides.

 Labels are written in many hands.

Magnifying glasses are provided.

Faded glory

In a corner of the old building at Farringdon station, which has a trace of the old sign "Parcels Office" outside, is this wonderful wall. At least, at one time it was wonderful and complete - time has ravaged it somewhat. It reminds me of swimming pools...

In 1989 this corner was a shop -

Currently the station is changing considerably, as it becomes an interchange between Thameslink and Crossrail, due to be complete in 2018.

Beyond rust dyeing

This is more straightforward than rust dyeing, but may be more limited in the kinds of patterning and subtleties it produces. Importantly, though, it won't break the machine needle when it's being sewn.

The active ingredients are lemon juice and heat. I saw it here and tried it with some squeezed lemons (top and bottom) and by flicking juice at the fabric (centre). Let it dry, then iron, at which point the colour will appear.