Andrea Heald

Part-time Lecturer

Math Department, University of Washington

Seattle, Washington, USA

I have always been fascinated by the interplay between mathematical ideas and visual representations of those ideas. I love creating beautiful objects out of yarn, especially when those objects can also serve some practical purpose.

Bn Scarf

59 x 12 cm

Silk Yarn

2018

This short scarf uses crochet cabling to illustrate an interesting braid group relation: If s_i the the action "put strand i over strand i+1" this illustrates the relation (s_1s_3...s_2s_4...)^n(s_i)(s_1s_3...s_2s_4...)^(-n) = s_(i+1). For clarity in the scarf each braid strand consists of a pair of cables.