In a world where too many people shy away from mathematics due to classroom trauma, I love to share mathematical joy and beauty. If I can turn heads while I do it, even better! My wearable pieces include hand knitting, crochet, sewing and beadwork, and I explore themes of symmetry and geometry.
Looks
Five-Square Shawl, crocheted by hand with Cumulus, a cotton/nylon yarn from Juniper Moon Farm.
Photographer: Susan Goldstine
Homespun Hyperbolics: Five-Square Shawl, Poincaré Denim, and hand sewn shirt by Susan Goldstine. Earrings by Sleepyhouse Designs, bracelet by Gwen Fisher, boots by John Fluevog.
Photographer: Ellie Baker
Model: Susan Goldstine
Homespun Hyperbolics: Five-Square Shawl, Poincaré Denim, and hand sewn shirt by Susan Goldstine. Earrings by Sleepyhouse Designs, bracelet by Gwen Fisher, boots by John Fluevog.
In the Five-Square Shawl, Sunburst Granny Squares are joined five to a corner to make an approximation of part of the hyperbolic plane. I was inspired by similar polyhedral quilts and blankets from various artists, particularly a blanket that Nan Ma made from five colors of fleece squares. I interpreted this design in a very traditional crochet motif to create an interplay between the folk-art aesthetic and the unconventional form. The shawl is a 3/5 sector of a centrally symmetric patch of the hyperbolic plane, analogous to a greater-than-180º circular sector in the Euclidean plane. This shape wraps nicely around the neck for a warm but not overpowering embrace.
The Sunburst Granny Square version I used is a free pattern from Cheryl Bennett's blog Crochet 365 Knit Too.
I had two main inspirations for this skirt: I enjoy symmetric tilings of the hyperbolic plane, and I needed something to do with the pile of worn-out jeans I had accrued over the years. Making a patchwork skirt struck me as a nice way to turn all my different denim scraps into a useable garment. After noodling around with different patterns, I settled on the tiling of the Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane by 30º–45º–90º triangles, familiar to me from HMS Coxeter's illustration. With the 30º angles centered, this tiling divides the Poincaré disk into 12 congruent sectors. In order to keep the skirt from being too full, I only rendered six of these sectors in denim.
