One of the perks about working at the Smithsonian Institution is your access to information. I can attend any lecture here that suits my interest. OK, I’m not the least bit interested in the "Far-Fetched and Far-Flung: Picturing the Nineteenth-Century American Whaling Industry" at the Portrait Gallery, and the presentation put on by the Mineral Sciences Lecture Series "NEW VIEWS OF JADE: MY ROAD TO THE MINES OF NANCIBON, MYANMAR" was just a little hard to keep up with (snore, snore, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz). Even so, most of what I get to listen to or participate in is cool.
Hyperbolic Crochet: I employ math skills in every crochet project I do, but I never think about any project as an actual equation. Crocheting Coral Reef Lecture & Workshop was a presentation given by Nancy Knowlton from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and Margret Wertheim, a science writer from The Institute for Figuring. As a way of bringing attention to the effects of global warming on ocean reefs Nancy, Margret and others are creating coral forms in crochet as art.
The lecture and workshop was attended by both nerds and fanatics, some who could crochet and others who should stick to mathematics, but fun was had by all. There was a surprising number of Ravelry folks there (DannyB, great talkin’ wit cha!),
...and most of us that were prolific crocheters spent most of our time teaching the basics of the craft, but still, it was intriguing to learn about the project. Some of us in the DC area will have a chance to participate in the project by creating some of the art pieces. If I end up making something, I’ll let you know. In the mean time you can find out more at http://www.theiff.org/reef/index.html.Update: the above link has since been deleted because the project was complete. You can visit the result of the Coral Reef Project at http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/hreef/communityreef.htmlhttp://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/hreef/communityreef.html or by visiting the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
