"Oceans Facing Mass Extinctions"

Global warming is a topic many believe to be a non event. How can we possibly have affected our environment to the point of reaching a critical mass point that would change our world in ways that haven't been seen for 55 million years? But the oceans are so big we say! They have always been able to flush themselves out, refresh and renew...

A group of scientists have recently met to converge the information about pollution, acidification, hypoxia, increased water temperatures and carbons accumulating in our oceans and the implications of that impact. They are in agreement that the world has seen this disaster several times in it's history and the results are catastrophic and have led to mass extinctions in the past. Their State of the Oceans report outlines their findings.
Already we are being made aware of the dying off of our coral reefs at an extremely rapid rate.
Read more about this important topic in a report featured on the PBS News Hour including video interviews.
The Maine Crochet reef project began as an answer to the annual fiber art installation in the Fiber Center at Fryeburg Fair. It has become my hope that it will also help to bring awareness to the impact that mankind is having on our environment and that in a small way our exhibit will change the way some of us impact the world we live in.

Learn how you can make small changes in your daily lives that can make a difference in our next post....

Hyperbolic Shapes; New Work...

After Seeing Daina Taimina's Hyperbolic shapes I decided to give it a go. I found one of her recommendations of using one increase in 13 beginning with a row of 20 chains. I used a variety of colors in the brown and orange family of colors and created this piece.

I love how it can be curled into different shapes! These photos are each  of the same piece just positioned differently...


Can't wait to get her book to see what other creations I can play with!

SEND ME PHOTOS OF YOUR COMPLETED WORK SO THAT I CAN SHARE THEM!

Maine Craft Association Crochet Reef Demonstration

Saturday evening June 4th the Maine Craft Association hosted me to come and demonstrate crochet and talk to mall shoppers about the Maine Crochet Coral Reef project. Folks who stopped by were fascinated with the samples as well as the project concept. We've begun a list of email addresses so that we can send our blog link to folks interested in learning more about the project or how they can participate and to follow our progress as we embark on the journey of creating this community Fiber Art project.


Thank you to the Maine Craft Association for having me and I look forward to working with you more in the future!

How Hyperbolic Crochet Began

Professor and Mathematician Daina Taimina received her formal education in Theoretical Computer Sciences and her doctorate in Mathematics in her native country of Latvia. After teaching there for 20 years she joined the Cornell Math Department in 1996 where she continues to teach today. She is credited with inventing  hyperbolic shapes using crochet.  In 1997 while attending a geometry workshop, she saw paper models of hyperbolic planes.  This inspired her to use the knit and crochet skills she learned in her youth to make more durable models. Her experimentation began with knitting but quickly moved to crochet to better accommodate the growing number stitches necessary to create the hyperbolic shapes. Today, Daina Taimina along with her husband Dr David Henderson, incorporate hyperbolic crocheted models in their classes on non-Euclidean geometry at Cornell as teaching tools. Additionally, Professor Taimina gives talks around the globe on teaching geometry as well as  the role that physical crochet models play in that teaching. 

It wasn't until the nineteenth century that mathematicians even believed that hyperbolic space was possible and the idea of making a model of one was considered impossible. Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring took it to another level by creating th Crochet Coral Reef project that Maine is participating in. 


We've come a long way baby! Combining the maths, science and art is what the Satellite Maine Crochet Reef project is all about but without Daina Taimina's experimentations and discoveries, crochet coral might possibly not exist. 


Ms. Taimina's models have also been included in the American Mathematical Model Collection at the Smithsonian Institution as well as many other venues around the world. Her book titled Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes is filled with  lovely photographs in which she teaches about the geometry of hyperbolic planes and includes patterns for creating them in crochet.


In September of 2010, Daina Taimina spoke at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in New York City about hyperbolic crochet. Watch this you tube video here. 

Maine Crochet Reef Progress Report

• The Maine Department of Education has a website designed for Art Educators. They recently posted an entry about The Maine Reef Project.
• Harrisville Designs in Harrisville, NH donated some of their wonderful 100% Wool yarns which will be used to crochet elements needed to create the Reef. Visit them by clicking on our link to their website.
• University of New England is excited about participating in our project as a way to help merge their science and art programs.We will be meeting with them in the coming weeks as they formulate plan that suits their interests and needs.
• Our first outings to promote the project by sharing information about the Maine Reef and crochet demonstrations are upcoming:
  - Thursday 3-6pm, at the Biddeford Farmer's Market held at 100 main St., In the former Pepperell     Mill Parking Lot.
  -  Saturday night 5 - 9pm in the art area of  theMaine mall called The Creative Common, at Center Court. We will share information about the Maine Reef project and demonstrate hyperbolic crochet. 

The Hyperbolic Crochet Reef Project - An article provided by the IFF

The Ladies Silurian Atoll (detail).

Photo © The Institute For Figuring (by Alyssa Gorelick) 

One of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches along the coast of Queensland, Australia, in riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile marvel it now faces devastation, along with reefs around the world. In homage to these disappearing treasures, Christine and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring instigated a project to crochet a handmade reef, a woolly testimony that also celebrates a strange geometry realized throughout the oceanic realm.

In coral reefs we witness an endless whimsical diversity--loopy kelps, fringed anemones, crenellated corals, curlicued sponges. All these forms are variations of a mathematical structure known as hyperbolic space. Though mathematicians had long believed this space was impossible, nature has been playing with its permutations for hundreds of millions of years. In 1997, Dr Daina Taimina of Cornell University realized how to make models of this geometry using the art of crochet. Building on Dr Taimina’s techniques through elaborations of her original code, the Wertheim sisters have spent the past five years developing an ever-evolving taxonomy of reef-life forms. Just as the diversity of living species results from variations in an underlying DNA code, so too a huge range of hyperbolic crochet ‘species’ may be brought into being through modifications in the underlying crochet code. There is an ever-evolving crochet ‘tree of life.’

The Crochet Reef is quintessentially a communal project and the community of Reef Contributors now spans the globe with participants coming from across the USA, as well as Australia, England, Ireland, Latvia, South Africa and Japan. Taken as a totality, the project has become an unexpected evolutionary experiment that engages thousands of people around the world.

Texts and diagrams © Institute For Figuring

Maine Crochet Reef Demonstration at The Maine Mall

The Maine Reef's official public appearance has been scheduled!

Saturday evening June 4^th from 5-9pm join Gale Bellew and Ann Thompson at the Maine Craft Association’s new retail shop, THE CREATIVE COMMON in the newly designated “creative center” at the Maine Mall in South Portland as they share information about this exciting Maine Fiber Art project. Anyone wishing to learn more about the project, see samples of hyperbolic crochet reef elements or try their hand at crochet is invited to come by.

Donations of yarn for this project will be accepted during the crochet demonstration hours of 5pm – 9pm on June 4th.

Ms. Bellew is the superintendent of the Fiber Center at Fryeburg Fair and Maine Reef project organizer. She will be managing the installation of The Maine Reef to be debuted at the Fiber Center during Fryeburg Fair week 2012. Ann Thompson is the Southern Maine Regional Coordinator for the Maine Craft Association and assisting with the reef project.

Everyone is invited to participate in helping create the Maine Crochet Reef.  Come to the Mall demonstration and see what it's all about!