When I’ve only been knitting for awhile, sewing feels like cheating. It’s over so fast!
A friend of mine was telling again the story of how she made a Klein bottle of bristol board and tape, so that she could cut it into two mobius strips during a talk she was giving. The rest of us in the conversation were, I feel safe saying, more of fiber artists and less of paper artists, besides which, I think anyone who knows what a Klein bottle is would know that Bristol board is not going to be the easy way to make one.
And so two days later, a re-usable deconstructable Klein bottle was born.
It uses two separating zippers to be “cut” into two mobius bands:
It’s hard to put together at first, but okay once you get the trick of it. Just a word of warning if you ever want to make your own: those two bands are in position to be zipped together, and they have opposite half-twists. I did it wrong the first time, and had to cut one open and switch the twist when I finally figured out that what I had was never going to work. You can see the extra line of stitching where that happened in both of the above photos.
There are more photos, including a series of putting-it-together (but without explanation) here.
I keep seeing new photos on Flickr and then forgetting to come here. Feel like the pictures don’t do the project justice. It’s one that I feel like I need to see and hold to appreciate.
I was wondering how you’d come up with the idea. Thanks for giving more of the story.
Yeah. It’s better to play with than to look at.
You can play with it next time you’re in Chicago?