Yeah, I had to do it! I mean, it’s not just a regular Pi day today – it’s a Super Pi day! The date is 3.14.15 … Pi to 4 digits! This won’t happen again for another 100 years!! If you’re old enough to be reading this, you probably won’t be around for the next installation – unless of course there’s some great innovations in the medical field by then! So what does Pi have to do with knitting, you ask?
Well, it seems this mathematical constant (I won’t go into the history as I’m sure you’ve been bombarded enough already today) intrigued one of the greatest knitting minds we have ever known – Elizabeth Zimmerman. Having a keen mind for mathematics and knitting, Elizabeth was famous for putting the two together. She discovered that you could create a shawl using the basic principles of Pi (the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle) and have only 6 increase rounds.
While the basic principle behind the Pi shawl is very simple, it wasn’t until Elizabeth discovered it and made the first one that they became popular. Today there are almost as many variations on the Pi shawl as there are knitters, and the possibilities are literally endless. You can take the basic concept and use it to create a shawl of your own, done in any pattern your mind can conceive. And then add the color combinations to that and you have as many possibilities as you have digits after the decimal in Pi – literally endless!
A quick search online and you’ll find loads of information about the Pi shawl, which is why I’m not going into too much detail here. Here are a couple photos found online of examples though …
If you’re on Pinterest, you can spend quite a bit of time browsing through the results of a Pi shawl search. Perhaps I’ll make one for next year!
For those of us who are total geeks out there, make sure you’re eating pie today (3/14/15) at 9:26:53!
Hugzzz 😎
