Knitting the Geek, Part 1

I've said in the past that I consider knitting to essentially be an engineering problem: how to achieve a certain shape using a certain yarn and a certain number of stiches as tools, under the constraints of gravity and so forth. I don't believe this is a common view in the knitting community (although perhaps the enduring popularity of EZ would say otherwise). In any case, I was thrilled to find some knitters even geekier than I am, knitting some fascinating things. I'll continue to post these occasionally, so please let me know if you too are "knitting the geek."

Everyone's seen a Moebius scarf (even my mom saw one in a knitting store and has wanted one rather badly ever since). A Moebius strip has only one side, and only one edge. Another one-sided surface with zero volume is (when this four-dimensional surface is immersed in three dimensions and made of glass) a Klein bottle*. It turns out that you can actually knit a Klein bottle hat. Just be careful when knitting: it's a surface that never ends!

* Funny story about Klein steins (drinking mugs in the shape of a Klein bottle): both my fiance and I seriously (and independently) considered buying these for each other as gifts, before deciding that they were too expensive. Sometimes we're so compatible it's spooky.