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The World of Illusion Knitting

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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

Throughout this time we were already committed to running several workshops, some with the emphasis on Maths, others for crafters. In the past we had approached each workshop in the same way we approached Maths lessons. We knew what the objective was and had a vague plan of how to get there but were liable to change tracks depending on the reaction of the audience. For this reason we had always worded the descriptions rather loosely and could change to suit the mood. There is often a long time between a booking being made and the workshop taking place so it was an advantage to be flexible. Both types of workshop use the same information but the presentation has to be different. Knitters don’t realise how much maths is involved in everything they do. Even those who follow a pattern very closely are able to make decisions about measurements and amounts of yarn without consciously linking this to any mathematical skill. However, we soon realised that it was best not to mention Maths until we were some way into knitters’ workshops. We developed a new plan of campaign that we have used many times, with minor adjustments.

Of the many workshops we have run, three stick in my mind. One was in Lancashire and several WI groups had come together in a new, but very traditional, village hall. It was typical of so many other workshops except that there were more participants at this one, which just magnified the reactions.

Picture the scene of more than 60 ladies of the WI, each of whom had brought yarn and needles of their own choice. The yarns ranged from 3 ply on very fine needles to chunky textured yarns. After they had inspected each others yarn, and some had swapped, maybe with the intention of trying to circumvent our foolproof system, we handed out cards with a square drawn on each. The ladies were asked to knit a square, starting at the corner and getting wider up to the diagonal, as marked on the card, then getting narrower until the square came to a point. The only other instruction was that they must remember how many stitches they had at the widest point.

Some were quicker than others, either because they were more skilled or because they had thicker yarn, but as soon as two neighbours had finished they compared squares to check that they really were the same size, whatever yarn had been used. Very soon six, seven, eight or more, were comparing squares. From the original sixty-plus, only one failed to produce a perfect square and that caused a great deal of hilarity.

We moved on, using the vital number they had noted when they reached the widest point. Each of their numbers had to be divided by 1.4 for them to know how many stitches to pick up along the side of the square. We often worked with these numbers and held the answers in our heads but did not reveal that to the participants as some would have found it intimidating. Instead we had a very large calculator and made a big show of putting in the number and pressing the right buttons to do the calculations. Because the squares were fairly small there were several knitters with the same number of stitches so not a huge number of calculations to be done. Once each knitter knew her number she could pick up that number of stitches along one side of the square to make a triangle in the same way as the second half of the first square. We also gave them an easy method to spread the stitches evenly along the side. Then we stood back to see what would happen. We knew what would happen; we had seen it so many times before.

The refined and sophisticated ladies of Lancs WI did exactly what we expected. Within seconds of three or four having finished a square with a triangle sitting on top, they laid them on the floor, shouting, “Houses! Houses! We’ve made a row of little houses!” There is something about the shape of a child’s drawing of a house that provokes this reaction whenever three or four are gathered together. They were so delighted they would have been happy to stop there but we hadn’t done with them yet.

With a little encouragement, they found other ways of fitting the shapes together, and they all fitted perfectly.

The final stage, in this particular activity, was to add a smaller triangle to each free side of the first triangle, turning the whole shape into a rectangle with a height one and a half times the width of the square. These were fitted together in a variety of ways.

At this point we started to mention Maths and told these ladies they had been using Pythagoras Theorem and the square root of 2 and tessellations and a few other things. Some were glowing with pride at having been so skilled whilst others argued that they couldn’t possibly have done that because they were ‘no good at Maths’.

The afternoon session was an illustrated talk explaining some of the mathematical ideas behind some of our designs. Everyone was happy. Some were keen to learn more, others were vaguely listening and frantically knitting squares and triangles which they arranged in little patterns around them. They didn’t all want to know why it worked. They were willing to accept that it did and that it was a system they could go away and use.

17a. SPREADING THE WORD