Jananas

So my mister, Jason, has a Fibonacci (and geeky math)-based sleeve. As a New Years present for him, I knit a Golden Rectangle afghan. This monster has 104 squares total and took 34 (yup, 34!) balls of yarn. It took six months to knit, one month to assemble, and one day to sew the fabric on the back. There were several breaks in there, but I started it in April and finished it in December.

For people who don’t know a lot about toe Fibonacci sequence, the gist is that each number is the sum of the two previous numbers in the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on and so forth. This is a pattern that is found in nature, from the formation of galaxies (fractals) to the spiral pattern of seeds growing in a sunflower. The Golden Rectangle exists when a square section can be removed, leaving another golden rectangle; that is, with the same proportions as the first. Square removal can be repeated infinitely, which leads to an approximation of the golden spiral.

For this afghan, I knit 9″ squares using different colours and stitch patterns to denote each section/square of the golden rectangle. I crocheted the squares together, and finally crocheted a border to help the afghan keep its shape. In the end I knit two 1×1 sections, a 2×2, 3×3, 5×5, and 8×8. Once assembled, the afghan is about 7 feet by 10 feet (so massive). We’ve laid it across the bed to help keep the heat in on these cold Canadian winter nights. In retrospect, I probably could have stopped at the 5×5 and had a nice afghan for couch sitting

To put this in perspective, its so big that even when standing on top of the desk in my study and holding the camera above my head, I still couldn’t get a picture with the entire afghan in frame.