Tessellations

Lucy Neatby tessellated intarsia fish
Originally uploaded by thomasina.

I’ve been thinking about tessellations in knitting recently, since Lucy Neatby is going to be teaching at Borealis Yarns this November. As a warning, knitted tessellations require either extensive intarsia, or extensive seaming. Two-stranded knitting in a few cases might work.

First off, a how-to guide and gallery (including an extensive collection of Escher tessellations) from Tessellations.org.

Lucy Neatby has two tessellated patterns, the Duck Sweater and Fish Wallhanging – a closeup of Lucy’s wallhanging is shown here.

The Tessellated Fish Blanket has been a popular subject on the Internets. Hytrevant Knits has an example of the original fish blanket, as designed by Paula Levy and published in Knitter’s Magazine 51 (Summer 1998; OOP). April Brokenarrow has reverse engineered a similar pattern; example fish.

Once I started looking for knitted tessellations, it was like learning a new word – you see it everywhere. My Little Fishy is a child’s raglan with three bands of two stranded knitted fish. Designed by Marie Grace Smith at The Garter Belt. (This might be stretching the definition a bit, since it has more distinct bands than typically seen in tessellations – but it does satisfy the requirement of interlocking tiles that can be tiled on a plane to infinity.)

~ by thomasina on August 28, 2006.