Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Karen “PhileoSophia” sent me an email a while back* with a bunch of knitting-related suggestions for the Geek Test. What do you think about her proposal that there is a relationship between knitting and geekiness? Is knitting a hobby that attracts geeks, or vice versa? Perhaps you would be so kind as to draw a Ven diagram and/or a graph a scatter plot and include it in your comment below.

In any case, here is the email I received. At the very least you should check out the links at the bottom! I’ve linked to a couple before on my blog, but they’re all great enough to link again. And all are added to my “someday I’ll have skillz to knit that” pile. Especially the knitted dissected frog and rat, which I could imagine displaying in a shadow box on my living room wall.

Greetings Yvette,

I love your site!  I am a proud, female Major Geek as well as an avid knitter/crocheter.  I have noticed that there is an odd relationship between knitting and geekiness.  For the past few months, I have been trying to find the geekiest knitted items on the web.  I have found Futurama’s Bender toilet paper holder, binary scarves, probability sweaters, d4 shaped dicebags, R2-D2 hats, the Digestive system, a truly amazing knitted Brain, other *ahem* body parts and systems, and, (my personal favourites) knitted dissections of a frog and a rat.  Perhaps you should look into the geekiness of knitting and consider adding that to the test.  A couple of examples would be:  “Have you ever… Used dice to determine the cable pattern for a sweater you’re knitting?  Transferred a program in binary to binary knitting (where Knit=0 and Purl=1)?  Knit any body system?  (Bonus points for the Circulatory system)  Created amigurumi of any Star Wars character?  Star Trek character? etc, etc.”

Yes, I am trying to inflate my score…    For your amusement, I have included some fun links of geeky knits for you to peruse! Enjoy!

PhileoSophia
(A Knitting Geek)

Binary Scarf
Code Red Virus Scarf
Chaos Sweater
Star Wars Amigurumi
Knitted Dissections
Knitted Brain
Knitted Digestive System

*I’m behind in answering emails, in case you sent one and have not yet received a reply. I read them all and try to answer them all!

Periodic Table Quilt

Originally uploaded by fadinghippie

A quilt in the shape of the periodic table! In delightful patchwork! With rainbow colors designating element categories! Flickr user “fadinghippie” is a genius!

I twittered today that I wanted to embroider and frame a periodic table, and my friend John sent me the link to this rainbow piece of nerdy/crafty/geeky delight.

What a lucky person the recipient is. My sister is getting closer to finishing her PhD in neuroscience, and I was just going to get her a subscription to “Over-Educated and Under-Employed” magazine.

Now I’ll feel lame if I don’t do something crafty for her, like paper mache a brain and turn it into a lampshade.

Any other suggestions for an appropriate nerd craft item that I could make and bestow upon her when her Day of Nerdoscience arrives?