Mathematical Artist
are particularly enjoyable to tie. There is something really enjoyable about making a design on paper or in my head come to life. The pan-chang-esque knot with the hexagonal grid is one of my favorites as I really like that grid pattern and was surprised that nobody seems to have ever used it in a large-scale knot. I’m also fond of the turk’s head-ish knot with unusual the “3 in 5” braid pattern.
are so much fun to make that they have shown up in this blog before! Here are a couple fun ones that I have made recently. The first one gives you a sense of just how many strawberries I ate on my last strawberry picking trip. The second one was made with thread crochet.
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.
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
seems like just the thing that I should like – seeing as I clearly very much like origami and knots. For exhibit here is an origami cubeoctahedron out of business cards that has been wrapped by a strand of red cord. The cord wraps around several times with four strand braids occurring every time four strands overlay. The resulting shape outlined by a cord is tetrahedral. I made this on the plane to G4GX. While there, I also worked on making a business card tetrahedron wrapped with octahedral knotwork, which, unfortunately, seems to have been misplaced.
