Hyberbolical Crochet

Some weeks ago I developed the notion to take up crochet. I’m honestly not too sure why. I knitted once, long ago, a very long scarf a while before Tom Baker made them fashionable, but knitting seemed a bit too much of a statement and two long needles too much to carry around casually. So, crochet. I did nothing about this notion until three weeks ago, when I mentioned it to a friend with whom I regularly drink coffee.

She said “I’ve been thinking the exact same thing”.

So we agreed to start and, to hold one another to it, to meet the following week chrochet in hand.

I had some nice red wool, took it to the notions shop up the road and bought a crochet hook to suit. Then I came home, read a few pages, watched a few videos, gave it a go, and was immensely frustrated. Craft pages are a bit like recipe pages; all mouth and no trousers. And videos, even for beginners, didn’t seem to have any of the problems I was having. Until, that is, I discovered one video in which the person made use of actual slow-motion filming, rather than just trying to crochet as slowly as possible. I regret now that I failed to make a note of it, and of course I don’t let YouTube keep a record of what I’ve watched.

Off I went, crocheting each evening for about an hour. It turned out to be the most relaxing thing ever, a lot like meditation I imagine, in that I couldn’t think of anything else except the movements I was trying to make, and make consistently. Honestly, as a way to end the working day, I’ve seldom tried anything as effective. But after crocheting a long swatch with singles, doubles and trebles, I began to want to make an actual thing, not just the beginnings of a small, thin scarf. I looked around in various ebooks available to me and honestly, nothing struck me as something I would want to use or even own. And then ...

When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear

Almost as I was about to give up, a new (to me) person appeared on the IndieWeb chat, talking about generative texture hats. Intrigued, I rushed off to her site. If you are a knitter, that looks fantastic, a randomizable pattern that delivers a hat with, er, a randomised pattern. But I’m no knitter, certainly not at that level.

“I’m looking for a first project, but anything like this would be well beyond me,” I said.

Sophia replied “what about a hyperbolic ducky?” with a link

Fantastic. Just my speed, and with a sound, nerdy basis. I set to, and in a little more than an hour had produced something that convoluted in on itself in a very satisfying manner. It took another hour to finish it off with a nice red border.

It wasn’t quite a duck, but it was very satisfying, very tactile, and very pleasing. So I made another one, and probably because I now had the knack of increasing the number of stitches in each row, this one ended up even more convoluted and, if anything, even more satisfying.

It wasn’t a duck, and what it reminded me of more than anything was some of the brightly coloured corals and nudibranchs (sea slugs) I’ve been privileged to see. That led me to some dead-ends of very boring crochet patterns for toy sea slugs, and also to a very dimly remembered TedTalk on The beautiful math of coral by Margaret Wertheim. And that took me to Crochet Coral Reef HQ.

All of which is to say, I think I have found what I want to make.

I’ve no idea how this is going to turn out, or how long I’ll stick with it, but I have already started a cylinder that might, if I’m lucky, turn into some kind of anemone. No formal patterns, yet, just an old biologist’s understanding of growth and form and some sense of ways in which I can embody different hyberbolic shapes.

I’m excited.