Jeff Suzuki

This is a knit cowl that consists of four loops interlinked to form a Brunnian link. The first three loops were knit in the round separately, then the fourth loop knit in the round (and through the others) to link them together to form a Brunnian link. While there is a simple "standard" construction of Brunnian links with arbitrary numbers of rings (sometimes referred to as the Brunnian chain or "rubber band link"), we found this to be aesthetically unappealing and instead constructed the cowl based on one of Brunn's original constructions with four links. We have long been fascinated by the concept of Brunnian links, having been exposed to the Borromean rings as a child; we feel that a structure that holds together only as long as all parts remain present is a metaphor for a functional society. We'd originally planned a set of six linked rings to produce a full rainbow, but producing this without using the "chain" structure has proven challenging. With four rings, we chose to represent the classical four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. The yarn was obtained from an art recycle store (stocked by donated materials), and seems to be acrylic.

This is a knit cowl in the shape of a Klein bottle. The object was created by knitting two strips (the black and the white); each strip was formed into a Mobius band; and the Mobius bands joined. A crucial feature of this knitwork is that it is "completely disassemblable": the fastenings are crocheted dumbbells and separate pieces, so they can be removed if desired. This allows the cowl to be converted into several different forms: e.g., the two parts could be converted into a single Mobius strip (and then separated down the middle to illustrate the feature that a Mobius strip cut in half retains its connectivity). An interesting feature of this construction is that it is "length invariant": the neck opening can be adjusted without changing the overall length of the piece. One of our earliest "mathematical" memories was learning about Mobius strips and Klein bottles, and when we learned to knit, one of the first real projects was to create a Klein bottle cowl. After trying out several different designs with varying degrees of success, we decided to create one that could also serve as a way to illustrate key features of the Klein bottle and the Mobius strip, and settled on this modular (in the fashion sense) design. The yarn was obtained from an art recycle store (stocked by donated materials), and seems to be acrylic; .