So today my self-directed lesson is in life and time patterns: knitting uses patterns, of both time and visualization. Plants have them. Clouds seem to be random and chaotic, but they appear as dictated by the flows in temperature, volume, pressure, and mass gradients. The rotation of the Earth is also cyclical. So what about those socks that I’m wearing now? The longer the project yarn, the longer it takes to complete the project, but the shorter the row, the further the length progresses, in the same yarn length and real time elapsed.
The period of a pendulum…related to the turning of a heel?
You bet. Painting a wall…my friend from work is doing that now- through her whole house- is also calculate-able in terms of period. Making elderberry fritters, syrup, apple tarts and sauces, harvesting black walnuts are all cyclical.
T = 2π √(L/g). It’s application carries across the universe. Period = twice pi times the square root of the ratio of the length of the pendulum to the gravitational effect in that region. Some periods are determined by nature’s unwinding, some by human will.
I’m sure there is an analogous equation for knitting. Humanity would be factored into the “g” for that expression. L, the physical length of the pendulum, would have some correlation to the task at hand. I’m not sure what units would be needed to describe the ratio in “task” to “humanity” compared to standards. I’m sure somewhere a social scientist has written a paper on this ratio.
And today in some other posting I read that Pulsar observations have recently been used to confirm the gravitational effect theories proposed decades ago. So the old adage “timing is everything” takes on a new meaning. I’ll remember that the next time I’m scanning PRESTO plots looking for a pulsar in the data haystack.
f=1/T. Frequency is the reciprocal of period, T.
How often you wear those socks knit through the winter, is directly related to how soon you wear out the heels and toes, and how frequently you’ll be knitting new ones and contemplating timing patterns in life, nature, the cosmos.
Grazing Days 