Knitted Hyperbolic Surfaces

Large pieces of hyperbolic space are better crocheted than knitted, I think, unless you are willing to use double-pointed needles (which I am not). It's fun to toss these at students and ask (a) is the curvature positive or negative on these objects? and (b) which one has greater curvature?
 

I had knitted the above bits from the inside out, so to speak, by beginning with a small number of stitches and putting an increase on every stitch or every-other stitch. (That's exactly what one does when crocheting.) In summer of 2004, Ari Turner asked me what would happen if I knit them outside in, i.e. by starting with a needleful of stitches and uniformly decreasing. Here are the results:

These were done at 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 stitch ratios, respectively. And it's much, much easier to knit outside->in than inside->out for these things...The recipe is as follows:

Cast on as many stitches as your needle will hold. (I use circular needles, always.)
2:1 stitch ratio? *K2 togtbl* each row until you feel done. Cast off.
3:2 stitich ratio? *K1, K2togtbl* each row until you feel done. Cast off.
4:3 stitch ratio? *K2, K2togtbl* each row until you feel done. Cast off.

Taken together, Ari and I agreed they look much like Xmas ornaments.

A nice, loose pseudosphere may be made in the following way:
Cast on as many stitches as your circular needle will hold. Join without twisting to work in the round.
*K10, K2togtbl* until one stitch remains. Yes, really, that works, and yes, really, that's all there is to it.


Miscellaneous Mathematical Knitting

The color orders in the stripes of this scarf form the group S3; think of S3 as acting on the triple (green, grey, black).

Finally, here are an old braid and a couple of newer braids. I have been working on more braids (mostly during meetings, which is why they aren't appearing quickly).
minibraid