Mobius Strip Tease

Mobius Strip

I've got Mobius Strips on my mind this week.  They have popped into my awareness in several different contexts recently and it feels weirdly like I'm supposed to pay attention.

I would explain but in the last half hour while looking at images trying to select one for this post, tracing their surface and edges with my eyes, my eyelids began to to get very heavy and my eyes want to cross or roll into the back of my head.

I think someone should look into the effects of Mobius Strip gazing as a soporific.  Better than counting sheep.

It's been a long day for me.  I woke before dawn on Thursday and it is nearly dawn again.  Thursday afternoon I spent five hours looking for a lost crochet hook.  My special size 9 steel with the dip behind the hook.  It was one of the ones in Ed's Grandma's sewing basket when it was given to me in 2006.  The hooks and the thread in that basket were the seed that began this crochet craze for me.

I have half a dozen projects small to medium begun with that hook and it is my only siize 9.  I lost my only size 8 somewhere between the parkinglot and the waiting room on a Dr visit last spring.  So that would leave me the choice between 7 and 10 to finish those projects and I wasn't sure how much impact the size difference would make on the work.

Well one good thing that came out of the search was getting a whole lot of stuff sorted, organized and put away.  But all the holding up and shaking out of blankets and sheets wore my arms out to the point it feels like I'm lifting weights when lifting my hands.

Want to see ore amazing images?  Do a Google image search for Mobius strip.  Or just go to the Wikipedia article.  There are some good images there but also some links to more images and discussion elsewhere. 

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I Found A New Playground

I got so lost exploring this site, I almost forgot I still needed to post. It is nasty hot here again tonight and I'd just as soon not cuddle up with my laptop to write a long post, its exhales are like dragon breath. So I'm just going to give you a few links to my new playground(s). Its both singular and plural as they are all the children of Stephen Wolfram creator of Mathmatica.

The one I stumbled onto first, via a link in someones blog post to a definition, was mathworld. mathworld (no caps is theirs) is similar to a wiki in the way you navigate and in the way users with proper credentials can add articles. But the site itself is created with the Mathmatica software. The site is a cross between an encyclopedia, glossary and tutorial for math from High School Algebra on up.

Exploration of mathworld eventually led me to Wolfram Demonstration Project a collection of interactive graphics demonstrating mathematical concepts. These include 3D and animations. But my main interests are the ones that can lend themselves to needlepoint design. Like this one demonstrating Gaussian Primes or this one demonstrating snowflake like patterns created with hexagonal cellular automata. Or Rep-tiles.

Then there is the gallery where they show off gorgeous art created with Mathmatica and offer posters for sale. Several of these 2D designs might lend themselves to needlepoint. It makes me wish I had the Mathmatica software so I could create my own designs. But it is waaaaay out of my price range.

Here is a site map to Wolfram's web presence: Wolfram Web Resourses. He even has a blog!

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