Friday, June 3, 2011

Math + Embroidery =

SP (my Special Person) told me this was his favorite math formula. I instantly thought it would be perfect for a cross stitch embroidery. And I harbored this idea in secret.

SP cleverly used the formula as a decorative illustration in my birthday card. This was fortuitous because I had naturally instantly forgotten it, and now I had it and I didn't have to ask and risk spoiling the surprise.

Now, cross stitch is not really my thing, but it does have its applications. I've done a tiny bit of cross stitch. If you've done any serious cross stitch you would probably realize that I should have done some math. I knew I wanted this to be small, so I had to graph very minimal numbers otherwise it would be too big. Experimentation revealed that stitching a single strand of DMC over individual threads of 28-count linen would do the trick.

The equation went pretty fast, especially the second time. (The first time I did the "1" last and that is what demonstrated that two strands of DMC was too much - definite distortion of the fabric.) Then, background. Piece of cake; it would go along speedily, one stitch over and over, no counting.

Actually, instead of counting I should have multiplied. After taking approximately half an eon to do the first few rows of background, I did finally multiply.

Just over 2.5 inches square at 28 stitches per inch tallies out at just over 5,000 stitches.

At that point I didn't work on it for a few weeks.

Eventually I got back into gear; my cross stitch technique (and speed) improved. By the end I think I could do at least two rows an hour...this is an estimate based on my soundtrack - I never worked with a clock in sight!

2 comments:

Mr Squiggles said...

This is a bunch of hooey. Your made up equation is another way of stating that e^(i*pi) = -1. Now we all know that e is irrational, pi is irrational, i is imaginary, and -1 is real (on Sundays and Thursdays). So an irrational number to the power of an irrational number is another irrational number. Then raise that to the power of an imaginary number and you get an imaginary irrational number. Which is certainly not a real number. Would you please correct your embroidery to reflect the true answer and stop trying to mislead impressionable minds. What are you going to tell us next???

That milk comes from cows (We all know it comes from grocery stores).

That the Princess of Oregon prefers to drink from a tub faucet (We all know she prefers silver tea cups).

That cars belching CO2 are the cause of global warming (We all know the real cause is eating too much inulin).

Sheeeeesh!!!

Ælfswyđ said...

Mr. Squiggles is full of beans, and he knows it.