A mobius is a mobius is ………..

A mobius is magical.  Take a length of paper, bring both narrow ends together and join them with a piece of tape – but! – before you join them – twist one of the ends so you are joining the front of one end of the paper to the back of the other end.  Now take a pencil and draw a line from that join until you meet that join again.  Magic!!!

I got to wondering who discovered this and imagine there is some wonderful scientific explanation but I also think it could have been that some child was playing with paper and glue and came up with this shape and took it to his mother and said, "Look what I've made" and she said, "I'm busy, go show your father" and his father said, "I'm busy, go show your grandmother" and his grandmother said, "Wow, that is neat, but I am busy too so go show that guy down the street who is always mumbling about formulas and stuff like that."  The rest is history…..

This is a mobius scarf or necklet made from Stephanie's handspun yarn.  I did it in     Tunisian crochet,  used a very large ordinary crochet hook;  it  drapes nicely and the shape of the mobius displays all those gorgeous colours.  It is made from a rectangle joined as mentioned above.

I found a piece of knitting in with my stash of fibre;  it was a WIP but from so long ago that a) I could not remember what it was intended toward  b) the name of the stitch and thus the method escapes me  c)  the content of the wool is also lost to memory.  But it was so pretty and nicely rectangular so I turned it into a mobius as well. 

This handwoven scarf was a find at a thrift store and since it was also a rectangle, albeit a lonnnggg one, I wondered if it would translate into a mobius.  It did!  Instead of joining end to end with a twist I chose a spot partway down, did the twist, and secured with a knitting needle, which means you can adjust the dimension at the neck.

I am aware you can  knit a mobius that is not a rectangle with ends joined but which you knit as a complete unit.  To find out more about this I googled  origin knit mobius and came up with oodles of information:  this  gave a brief history of the mobius in knitting ( it was on the first page which is always appealing and satisfying) and answered a bunch of my questions. After reading through several instructions on just how to knit an intrinsic (as compared to an extrinsic) mobius – well, I may have to do one simply to meet that challenge – but, in the meantime, I am very glad I can knit a rectangle and do the twist and join.

Furthering this adventure – a day or so ago I came across in a book on hats the instructions on how to knit in the round and it cautioned about keeping all the cast on stitches "untwisted, or you will end up with a mobius which is interesting but not what you want….."    

Well, I did want….. and within minutes I had found a small circular needle and some yarn and cast on a bunch of stitches and – twisted them – and knit around and around and around.  Sure looked like a mobius to me!!  Had I, by chance, discovered  a simple way to knit an intrinsic mobius??? 

No, I had not.  With a mobius, as in the paper model in first photo, the pencil  line goes around and around on both sides and ends up at the starting point.  On my  ????????  a chalk line goes around and around but only on one side.

So what have I unvented?  This one makes a nice wrist band or would look kind of cute as a ruff on a small dog.  I plan to do it with only one strand of yarn (the purple ??????  has two strands:  I was in a hurry of discovery) and make it a bigger circumference to see if it can also be used as a  mobius  (faux?)  scarf. 

PS  Check this out! 

PS 2  Marilyn will be giving a Moebius workshop based on Cat Bordhi's method at Knotty by Nature  on Saturday January 3 2009  so get in touch with her if you would like to take part.