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Braids

can be used to make very attractive choker necklaces. The bottom three here are choker length. My personal favorite is what I refer to as a “3 in 5” braid as it is a five strand braid that alternates between three and five strands. These braids all have the property that they were braided out of a single length of cord that was looped to form the number of strands in the braid and then braided normally downward. This is possible with all odd stranded standard braids, but no even stranded standard braids with greater than four strands. A second strand is added for color interest, as well as a loop and knot system for clasping (out of a 3-strand braid and a standard knife lanyard or Chinese button knot.

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The Gathering for Gardner 10

was held at the end of March 2012. I had a really great time there, and, in addition to meeting lots of amazing people, learning a bunch of cool things, and seeing some astounding close up magic, also had the opportunity to put together a bunch of fun sculptures. Here are the three biggest projects that I contributed to.

This slide-together is my own design, based off of a pentagonal hexecontahedron. Zachary Abel and Brett Wines helped with construction.
Gathering For Gardner - 01
This pen and rubber band structure, dubbed the “Ritz Icosidodecarlton” was a joint project with Zachary Abel, Lucas Garron, Brett Wines, Alex Fink, and Sai. Vi Hart also supplied some artistic input.
2012-03-30 16.00.22
Finally, this giant rubber band structure with the balloons (based off of a snub cube with “tendrils”) was designed by Zachary Abel and put together by a large group people (I didn’t all the names).
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The Chaka Stata

was an exercise in building an Incan rope bridge in as traditional a manner as possible. My classmates and I spent much of our Spring 2007 term twisting twine into two-ply cords and cords into thick ropes. Fortunately, the end result was beautiful and well worth it. It was also covered pretty thoroughly by the press. The MIT spotlight on it, with links to various articles about our bridge, can be seen here:  http://www.mit.edu/spotlight/inca-bridge/

The images here were taken by Christine Espino

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The USS Sharkette

was built by Paul Csonka, Kseniya Charova, Cameron Schaeffer, Jane Huang, and me in April 2011. The photos here were taken by Paul Csonka and Lewis Hom.