Highly Unlikely Hexagon and Borromean Link

I'm still having fun with cubic right angle weave. 

This piece is Three Intersecting Rectangles for the Math Nerd In You No. 4 (Borromean Link).  Each of the three rectangles is an entirely separate piece of bead weaving.  Although all three are linked together, no two are linked to each other. 

Here is a Highly Unlikely Hexagon, also made with cubic right angle weave.  Matte black, gold and aqua... and I added a few sparkling Swarovski crystals at three of the corners for a little subtle bling.  These pieces are available in my Etsy shop, just in case you want them.  Thanks for looking.    

Unlikely Square Earrings and Pendant

I've been fiddling around with cubic right angle weave (learn how to make CRAW), making beaded versions of things like the Impossible Triangle of Roger Penrose.  This strange construction was made famous by M.C. Escher, and several years ago, I made what I think was the very first one using bead weaving.  Since then, several new finishes of beads have been made available, many of which have found there way into my big box of beads.  So I decided to revisit these designs with some of my newer bead finishes.  I'm really quite fond of these new colors.

Because a square has four sides, and CRAW also has four sides, you can color the square frame with four different colors that wind their ways around the frame.  Each color does one lap around the square.  Here's a different color scheme of the same construction.

The triangle doesn't lend itself to this same kind of coloring, since it has just one edge and one face that wind their way around the triangle three full laps. 

I really wanted to use more colors than in the triangle above, so I made this triangle below.  It has a different color on each leg of the triangle.

I really liked the color scheme of the square earrings and pendant at the top of this post, so while the beads were out, I made some DNA Earrings (learn how to make them yourself).  I added some green amethysts to add a touch more sparkle.

And a little pair of Cutie Pie Earrings (learn how to make them yourself), with three natural sparkling amethyst on each earring.

Links for the tutorials are in the text above.  The jewelry is for sale in my Etsy shop.   Click on the photos to see the listings.  Thanks for looking.

Infinity Ubercube and Other Beaded Cubes

Florence Turnour and I will be teaching two classes at the Bead & Button Show 2012.  Lately, I've been working diligently on our kit offerings. The kits each make 11 beaded beads.  This is the complete green kit. (Click on the photos to see them larger).

To make some jewelry, our students will each receive a "Findings Packet" including things like wire, ear wires, crimps, ribbon, etc.  We will not be including larger beads, however, because we want to encourage them to be creative with their beaded beads and make their own jewelry their own.  For example, I added a few extra beads from my own stash including hand made borosilicate glass, a glass button, dichroic glass and a big glossy prehnite.  With these, I made a pair of earrings and a simply strung necklace.

Here is a close-up of the pair of earrings I made with the mini cube beaded beads.

These are the 11 beaded beads in the pink and purple kit,

and this is the necklace I made with the beaded beads. I've had those purple glass roundels for years, and they finally found a home.

Florence designed this kit in juicy fall colors.  Those purple drops just want to be plucked!  

I'm looking forward to seeing what she and all of our students make with their kits.  If you would like to sign up for this class, we still have spaces available: http://www.beadandbuttonshowstore.com/b121667.html.
After the show in June, we will have any leftover kits and the pattern available for sale on our website. Thanks for looking!

Video on Mathematical Bead Weaving Talk G4G

I finally recorded a video of the talk I gave at the Gathering for Gardner in March, 2012.  My audience was mostly mathematicians and puzzle designers, and I created this talk with that group in mind.  I assumed that most of them had never seen bead weaving before; so I tried to make this a quick overview, showing a large range of mathematical concepts in the short time they gave me to speak.

Since there were so many speakers, the organizers gave most of us just five minutes, and they joked that you get a silver dollar for each minute under five that you used.  This video is just under six minutes, so no dollar for me.  I hope you like it.

Hyperbolic Felt Lace Bracelets

My new friends and I met for our second "Make Stuff Sunday" yesterday, and we continued to play with felt.  As you can see from my last few posts, I devised a technique for making chunky felted lace which can be used to make surfaces of all types, and I've been playing around with it to see what is possible.

In this post, all of the (lone) pieces in the photos are examples of hyperbolic surfaces, meaning they have saddle points or negative curvature.  Informally, it's a saddle point if the concavity goes up in one direction and down in another direction.  One super cool fact about hyperbolic surfaces is that the geometry on a hyperbolic surface fails the parallel postulate, which is why I think everybody's been calling it a postulate for so long and not an axiom.... but I digress.  In terms of sewing, you might say that a piece of hyperbolic fabric has ruffles, or it flares like you get when you add gussets to a skirt.  This is in contrast to flat fabric (i.e., normal fabric) or something that curls into a ball, like the blue-purple bracelet here...

...or the green-purple bracelet on the bottom of this photo.  The top bracelet is hyperbolic, and the bottom bracelet is spherical with positive curvature (i.e., it's a ball).  I like the way you can stack them into a vase.

This purple and black piece resembles a hyperboloid, but I checked it for straight lines and it failed to have them.  So it's still hyperbolic, but a little too ruffled to be a true hyperboloid.

This is a little crown for a snow queen.  I stitched beads to the felt to look like snowy ice crystals. Like most crowns, this piece flairs out at the top, thereby making it hyperbolic.  It's more or less the same size as the others, and it still fits as a bracelet, but I intended it mostly to be worn on top of the head as a crown.   I think it would look nice with a wedding dress, something blue, and all.

This cute little ruffle isn't a bracelet, but it is an awesome little hyperbolic surface.  More precisely, it's a patch of the hyperbolic tiling by pentagons, where four pentagons meet at every vertex.  It's called the order-4 pentagonal tiling.  This piece was created by mathematical rock star, Vi Hart (she calls herself a mathemusician, but I kind of like mathematical rock star).  After our adventures last week making Seifert surfaces in felt, Vi wanted to felt a hyperbolic tiling.  I gave her some instructions to get her started, and she did everything else.  

In fact, it was her expressed desire to make this piece that led me to devise this technique for felted lace.  This is a nice example of how representing abstract mathematical objects as sculptures leads to more general techniques.  I really love it when that happens.  Math inspires art, which then gives me a reason to write about both.  

The yellow is wool, and the orange is recycled sari silk, which Vi used to emphasize the boundary.  After playing with hers, I kind of want one.   But I also want to make a felted hypercube.  Too many choices...

Textile Cuff Bracelet No. 35

I've been having way too much fun with felt lately. I just can't get over how sculptural wool felt is. You can make these wildly lacey pieces that are light as air, but they hold their shape.  Compress it an it will collapse, but then it pops right back into position. This is a bracelet, by the way, and it's in my Etsy shop just in case you need it.  Only you know for sure.

Yesterday, a good friend of mine set up my computer so that I can easily watermark my photos in batches rather than one at a time.  So finally, after releasing more than a thousand photos on to the internet with no watermark, I'm finally going to have them marked with my name.  What do you think?  I'm not sure that this is the final version, but I think it's a good start.  I'm definitely open for suggestions for improvements, if you have any.

Textile Cuff Bracelet No. 34 Purple Wet Felt

I love the sculptural possibilities with felt, that it is soft, but at the same time, holds its shape so that large bangle bracelets like this are possible.  It's so light, you'll hardly notice you're wearing it.  

It's in my Etsy shop.  Click on the photo to go to the listing.