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I heart Haeckel

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More textures than you ever wanted to know existed. Read more about him, or cut to the chase and see his work at the Wikimedia Commons.

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Popular Posts

Tardigrade pattern

sciento.co.uk Tardigrades are so crispy! Nonbelievers, observe this beautiful comic by Alex Chitty . Obviously I have been wanting to crochet these for a long time, but only recently got around to it, encouraged by a request from a great lab from my undergrad alma mater that uses them as a model organism. Here's a pattern so you can do it too. I had a great time working on these articulated body segments, but they can definitely be optimized. I want to try inserting some rounds of thick craft foam or thin cardboard at the boundaries of each segment, and possibly tether the whole thing together internally, nose to tail, so that the segments remain compressed together. If you try it, let me know how it works! I'm going to use abbreviations here - I always though they were weird and annoying, but I was forced to learn to use them for a project and now I am hooked on phonics. 'Sc' means to make a single crochet in the next stitch, and along those lines ...

A scheme for crocheting fronds, ferns, seaweed, etc

A few people have asked me for patterns for these types of structures. I think it is much easier to just explain the gist of how to freeform it, rather than give an explicit pattern, so here is my attempt. Simply begin with a chain, which, at some point, you'll begin single crocheting back into. This will form the point of the leftmost branch. When the sub branch is as long as you would like (three stitches for the first small branch in the diagram above) chain again to start a second sub branch. Single crochet back onto these new chains to complete the sub branch. You can then continue to single crochet along the "stem" of the branch to finish it off, and chain again once you are back to where you'd like the main "stem" to be. (A "stem" is made from chains that remain without single crochets while you start working another chain.) Repeat as desired, and then begin single crocheting back along the stem instead of chaining again when you've fini...

How to crochet DNA (with proper chirality)

From left to right: crocheting RIGHT handed; crocheting LEFT handed, and crocheting BACKWARDS RIGHT handed. I've been interested in finding ways to represent biological molecules at something representing an accurate scale. To that end, I though it would be awesome to have a standard way of making a double helix of DNA. I tried a bunch of different stitch heights and increase ratios, and it turns out that something very simple works pretty well! 1. Make a chain of length = # desired base pairs/2 2. Chain 1 3. In 2nd chain from hook, make two single crochets in top loop. Repeat for each chain stitch. 4. At end, chain 1, slip in same stitch, chain 1. 4. Turn work 5. Beginning with the last-worked stitch in the base chain, make two single crochets in bottom loop of the base chain. Repeat for the remainder of the work. This yields a helix with about 10-11 base pairs per turn - there's even a major and minor groove! One problem, though - if you do this RIGHT HANDED, ...

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