Curve of Pursuit had become very popular. It was very obvious, from the afghans that had been made, that some people saw it as a series of swirls whereas others saw squares within squares.
We wrote magazine articles linking the art and maths of the design, mostly exploring the effects of using different colours, joining small curves together in different arrangements, and playing with the art rather than the maths.
Swirly things seem to be very popular with knitters so we started to investigate what we could do with curves of pursuit that did not have a square outline. Curves with other numbers of sides are easy to draw but not so easy to represent in knitting. We experimented with lots of possibilities but none gave very satisfying results. We often ended up with something very similar to where we started. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stick to our strict geometric principles and we decided that there had to be some compromise between maths and art.
Whilst the logic of Revolution is firmly based on creating a circle it has a lot of straight lines within it and relies on the flexible nature of knitting to create its shape. It has eight slightly curved sides but it is neither a circle nor an octagon.
The design looks complicated but it is deceptively simple. It can be knitted on straight needles and is knitted using just one ball of yarn at a time, with a relatively small number of stitches on the needles, even at the outer edge.
It is also wonderfully accommodating for any yarn. I used one ball in each of eight colours, of my favourite yarn but the pattern is such that it allows you to stop whenever you want to, or if the yarn runs out. As with many of our designs, the pattern gives lots of alternative ways to colour the design and we quickly started seeing some very dramatic versions. Almost since its inception it has consistently been in our top four most popular afghan designs.
