Graph Paper Generator

I was looking for triangular graph paper recently but couldn't find anything in the shops. In the end I decided to order online...

But guess what I found instead? A free online graph creator! Isn't this cool!!



You can design your own graph to the scale you want, with lots of options of line direction, thickness, colour, etc



You can even get a circular graph! Once you create the graph, you can instantly download it as a pdf file and print it out.



This opens up sooo many new design possibilities!

I think my family might just go hungry over the next few days while I play with my new graph paper...

A soccer ball is not round.

Really.

A soccer ball (or football if you're from Europe) is a spherical polyhedron or spherical truncated icosahedron. It is a shape made up of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. It has 32 flat sides, but because of the elasticity of the material, the air pressure inside pushes the flat sides outwards so that it appears round.



So why would I be interested in the shape of a football?

Everybody who follow football will know that the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be held in South Africa in June and that football fever has gripped the country. As expats we often feel left out of national celebrations like this, and therefore I decided to do something to make me (us) feel part of the hype.



Because craft is my thing I am planning to make soccer balls in all the different mediums that I love to work with. So far I have a quilted, crocheted and embroidered ball planned...



Before I can start with the actual balls I had to make a test ball to try out different methods of doing the seams and to make sure I have the size right. (The straight edges of the hexagons and pentagons has to be 4.5cm to make a size 3 ball.)



I first tried to sew the sides together with the sewing machine, but the corners were a mess, so I ended up sewing them together by hand. It looks much better.

I used a contrasting colour thread for the test run, but for the real thing I will use something less obvious. The fabric for the first ball is ready for cutting, so watch this space...

The Golden Mean

I've been procrastinating over how to start this blog for some time now. Then on Tuesday I attended a talk by María Pérez-Luque on Art and Mathematics and I was completely blown away by the shear brilliance of it all. How awesome is our Creation! Then I knew that the best way to start talking about my own creativity is to start with the awesome work of our Creator. Just to put things into a little perspective...
Firstly she talked about the Golden Mean and the Fibonacci series. I had some knowledge of this through my architectural studies but by no means did I understand the magnitude of it. The Golden mean is a mathematical equation with which to measure scale and proportion in architecture and nature. It is usually expressed like this:(Sorry, I know this image is really small, but I am stilling getting the hang of uploading pictures... It will hopefully improve with time.)
It basically means there is a ratio of 1:1.618 between different components of the same thing. And this applies to everything from nature to architecture and art. It is also described as the formula for beauty because if something just looks 'wrong' it is usually not according to this formula.
The Fibonacci series is a series of numbers that looks like this: 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 ... the following number is always the sum of the 2 previous numbers (2+3=5; 3+5=8; etc) And when you divide one number by the previous one you get... ta da.... 1.618This sequence is evident everywhere in nature from pine cones and pineapples to the way leaves are attached to the branches.
A great website that explains this a lot better than I can and also has great images can be found hereHere are a few images from nature to illustrate this principal:

Enjoy!!