Okay, this is going to keep bugging me...

[firstfrost]

Did I knit you a grey shawl, which shumashi borrowed to wear in "Charlie and Algernon" six years ago? (Or, if it wasn't you, do you know who it was?)

(Crowdsourcing my memory in my old age, sigh...)

Comments

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I suddenly have this memory of it being referred to as a Pi shawl, if that helps at all.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Hmm, like this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15906682@N05/1806463700/
except I keep trying to make that be your red shawl instead. Now I don't remember what that one looks like...

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think so.

I'm pretty sure the red one is this, by the way.
http://stuff.mit.edu/~boojum/KnitIndex/html/pix/gathering%20011.jpg

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. That one is also a pi shawl (though pi isn't really in the numbers). It has to do with how the increases are done, which is "double the number of stitches in one row, then knit until double the number of rows that you knit last time" (because the circumference=2piR, except that 2pi might as well be k), iterated. So in both that one and the one I showed you, you can see that the increases are all in the visible rings, which go from sparse stitches to dense stitches. The technique was invented by Elizabeth Zimmerman, the grand dame of knitting, and she called them "pi shawls" when she described it.

[kelkyag]

You made me a grey circle shawl in super-snuggly baby alpaca. The pattern is more leafy than diamond-y. I don't remember whether I loaned it to shumashi for a play, though ... lots of my stuff has gone to the theater or to a larp at one point or another, and I lose track.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Ooh, was it this one?

http://stuff.mit.edu/~boojum/KnitIndex/html/pix/amazing%20009.jpg

(username knit, password purl)

When I was trying to remember with shumashi who it was, you were my only guess, so my memory is not totally defective!

[kelkyag]

Yes! I think that's it. :)

May I ask what prompted this racking of memories?

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

shumashi was wondering if I could make her a grey shawl like the one I made someone else that she borrowed, and I mostly kind of stared into space and said "Did I make a grey shawl? Why don't I remember it?" and was very confused. :)

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

Super-snuggley baby alpaca sounds right. :)

[kelkyag]

Mmmmmm, baby alpaca ... such decadent yarn.