Knitted Higgs

Last week, I knitted a Higgs Boson. I am more than aware that this is even more ridiculous than the "Rosalind" DNA illusion scarf. As least that scarf was (a) inspired by some ideas in the history and sociology of genetics (b) keeps my neck warm and toasty now the nights are drawing in. This is just blue lump (roughly 10cm wide) inspired by little more than a challenge on twitter and embroidery based on a google image search for "higgs boson". And anyway, it's really more a representation of the particle collisions working at the LHC in the search for the Higgs than the boson itself. And um... a very sketchy representation at that.

The reason for actually taking the time to bother to produce the thing was to provide a jokey prize for a competition run to encourage people to pre-order a Geek Calendar. The Geek Calendar project is, arguably, yet another ridiculous idea. Dreamed up in a pub one night, we joked that we could easily sell a calendar of nerds in aid of libel reform (quite a cause in several geeky corners of the UK). We laughed about it on twitter and got a huge response (it trended in London), thought why not and... um... a few months (and 15 photoshoots) later, we've sold several 100 on pre-orders alone already. You can see a tiny preview, but it's not even printed yet.

If I'm honest, I was already slightly sick of the self-conscious re-claiming of the word "geek" even before I started this project (positively retching at it now...). Still, I do think it's worth celebrating the various nerdish elements of contemporary life. People do specialist things. In detail. They get inspired and obsess. And they're cool. This has always been true, but I think it's more obvious today. We rely on detailed specialist knowledge more and more, and the internet has let us connect specialist interests more easily. Whether this is dedication to a cause, an over-achiever hobby or simply sharing a love of antique calculators, there's a lot of this geeking about. We rely on detailed specialist knowledge more and more, and the internet has let us connect specialist interests more easily. Crucially, this sense of specialism means there is no single definition of what a geek likes or does, there are multiple ways to get your geek on, as we all run down our own various rabbit holes. In many ways, knitting is a perfect example of this, the very niche area of science knitting, even more so.

Check out our flickr to see how much fun I've had at the photoshoots. You can pre-order a calendar now, or proper printed ones will be available from the end of October. If you want to read more about the problems of libel law in the UK, I can recommend this recent essay by Alan Rusbridger.

See also the ravelry project page for info, not that there is much more information there. Really: a blue ball, embroidered, stuffed and closed. That's it. The actual hunt for the Higgs is way more interesting.

Piano made from cassette tapes

This has nothing to do with knitting but it's something somebody made and I think it's beautiful. A "piano" built from cassette tapes. It's from a Harvey Nicholls window display, hence the mannequin in the background of the last image.

I love the way they've used black and white tape cases to make the keys, as well as empty cases and a mix of standard sized and smaller DAT tapes. I think my favourite bit is the use of the tape itself - again of varying sizes, as strings of the piano.

I took the photos on the way home from the Natural History Museum last month, after helping out at their Stitch a Squid workshop. It was around 10pm - late-opening at the Museums - and the light shining through the transparent tape cases sparkled in the dark.

If you want another (tenuous) knitting reference, here's a picture of some piano socks I made a few years back.

Normal knit-blogging will resume shortly. I'm currently knitting a higgs boson. Why? Look here.

Busy bees

A baby photo of me and my flatmate Kirsty. Yes, Kirsty who made the awesome Wonder Woman jumper that got Boing-ed. That Kirsty.

Our parents have known each other since they were teenagers, and I've known Kirsty since before I could speak. We've shared a flat together for six years now. We joke that when we do finally stop living together we'll never manage to disentangle our joint knitting needle collection. In truth, it'll be a lot more than just that.

She is a bit under a year older than me. Which means she's got to do most things first. She learnt to speak, learnt to walk and learnt to knit first. She went to university first, she left university first (something I'm still struggling to do). She was even Alice before me, as it's her middle name. And she turned 30 first too, yesterday to be precise. See her failing to blow out all the candles in one go.

On such a momentous occasion, I could bang on about what an amazing person Kirsty is, how much she has taught me, how much she means to me. But it's not really my style. Or hers. Or our relationship's. Or this blog's. Instead, I'll show you one of the birthday present I knitted for her and take some photos of her feet. 

Legwarmers, covered in bees. One hundred and eighty bees to be precise. Nine sets of bees, each containing ten bees.

They are based on Pinneguri's bumblebee socks, but legwarmer-ised (larger circumference, and no toe or heel). I also striped brown and yellow yarn, rather than use self-striping, and stuck to just the three colours. I think the amazing yellow yarn really makes them, it's Jitterbug in "Vincent's Apron".

The project is ravelled here which includes full details of yarn and needles and link to pattern.

It was part of a bee-themed collection of presents (largely inspired by the legwarmers, Kirsty has no special "thing" about bees, though obviously we all know bees are cool). This included sponsorship of a beehive, honey bath things, an actual pot of honey, and a bee-covered honey and chocolate cake.

Breezy Brighton

Here I am on Brighton beach, with my newly knitted socks. Full knitterly details like yarn, etc on ravelry, this post'll explain why I knitted them.

The bobbles running up each side are organised to represent the word "yakawow" in braille. Back in mid-April, the Times published an interview with controversial scientist, Baroness Greenfield. She'd said all a whole host or objectionable and/ or funny things in this interview, and people were chipping in with their favourite bits. "Crowd reading", if you will. Someone quipped "She's right abt 1 thing: we don't want "load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow". Cos that would be MENTAL". Another replied with "Yaka-wow must used more! Dunno its meaning but ace phrase".

They were clearly onto something. I logged into twitter a few hours later, after a very serious evening discussing the role of science communication in the developing world, to discover a @yakawow account was now following me. (I still don't know who is behind this account, though I have my suspicions). There were also tshirts for sale, a youtube video, various photoshopped images and facebook page.

It turned out Greenfield didn't coin a new term. It was a transcription error of "yuck and wow", a phrase Greenfield has often used to describe the way people act online, running quickly from one sensation to another. Greenfield is (in)famous for her concerns that computer games and social networking sites are damaging our brains, leading to short attention spans and an inability to empathise (e.g. see this news piece). This makes more sense than "yakawow", but Greenfield's views on computers is not without its critics (short version: all very well as an idea, but it lacks evidence).

The yakawow meme kept running. It was Boing-ed. Quick to celebrate the new word they had invented, the The Times wrote about it (see also this cartoon, from print version). The New York Times vocab blog picked it up and apparently it's in the latest edition of Wired, though I haven't see a copy yet.

One of my old students challenged me to knit yakawow. It had to be socks. Greenfield famously referred to twitter as "reminiscent of a small child saying "Look at me, look at me mummy! Now I've put my sock on. Now I've got my other sock on". I also thought the word would provide an opportunity to play with knitting braille, something I'd been thinking about trying for ages.

I worked three panels of the word, loosely reflecting the streams of code in the poster for the Matrix (a play on Greenfield's suggestion that computer mediated communication is somehow not real). I knitted them one at a time, rather than two-at-once-on-a-huge-circular to mirror Greenfield's point about people on twitter saying they'd put on one sock and then another. They were also from the bottom up: read something into that if you want, I can't be bothered to extend the symbolism any further.

When I wear these socks, I will wiggle my toes inside them and celebrate my belief that interacting online is not without its tangible consequences. Social media sites, not least knit blogging and ravelry, provide real relationships with real people doing real things. Imaginative and clever people who get together to collaboratively discover, develop, teach, learn, critique and create. As the Times' piece on yakawow concludes:

Baroness Greenfield, take note. These people’s brains haven’t atrophied yet. They have taken your interview and created a whole new universe. I think, therefore I yaka-wow.

Still, it can be nice to have a break from it all. Which is why although this photo was taken on Brighton beach on Monday, I didn't blog about it until today. I've been away from the internet, reading a book and knitting a legwarmer. I also took those socks off and went for a bit of a paddle.

FO: leaves scarf

Leaf scarf done. Or at least I call it a scarf, I think I’m might use it as bunting, it’s not the sort of thing I’d wear normally. It's a bit big for a necklace and too small for a scarf. That said, I don't really have much call for bunting either. It's finished anyway, even if I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet.

It was always more of a process knit rather than something produced for the final product. A nice easy project to take to knitting groups. I had a few balls of green yarn leftover from a sweater. I didn't want a green hat or a green scarf. I liked how grassy the yarn was. So I decided to knit some leaves.

It's really just icord with the odd leaf growing out of it. I kept knitting until I run out of yarn, adding new stems and leaves wherever looked appropriate. The leaves were easy to make, 2kfb, k, turn, sl1, k2. Then continue to increase either side of the center stitch every RS row until it was big enough, then a few plain rows, before decreasing back again (always slipping the first stitch of each row). I did a center decrease where you slip 2 sts at once, k1, then pass both slipped sts over at once. This helps make the "stem" of the leaf pop. Yes, there were a lot of ends to sew in, but I just did them as I was going rather than leaving them to the end of the project.

The result was a long vine of quite crumbled leaves. Most people I showed the WIP seemed to like this look. I did too, but I also really wanted to see what would happen if I blocked it, how (or if) I could re-shape the leaves. Above is a pre-blocking shot, below shows after. This "during" shot shows the leaves flattened out for a bit, but it didn't make much difference in the long run.

The above shot is also a "bunting" shot as opposed to one of me wearing it as a scarf, below. What do you think, bunting or scarf? (or something else?). All ideas gratefully crowd-sourced.

As ever, there are a few notes on the yarn and needles on the project's ravelry page (n.b. this is public ravelry link, you don't have to be logged it to see it. Ravelry project pages don't have to be exclusive any more, how cool is that?).