![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsThis post was going to be about thinking styles. azurelunatic and I were discussing the different brain processes in knitting and crocheting, and yourlibrarian and I were talking about pattern thinking and the autistic brain, and I was having Very Thinky Thoughts.
I riffed for a while on my brain, my making-of-things, my peculiar set of limitations and strengths. I took some photos. I coded some links, I wrote and deleted some sentences.
But it's a sunny Sunday in June. I had a bacon cheeseburger for lunch, I've spent my morning beta-ing the work of two writers, both brilliant, and you know what? My brain isn't up to the task of making coherent noises about itself.
So instead, here are some pretty pictures of beadwork, as metaphors for two modes my brain likes to use.
Brain mode one--crochet-brain, if you will--works out from a center, a small starting point.
Here, the center was seven brick-red beads in a loop. There was no pattern, no plan. Just a set of colored beads, a needle and thread, and the number 7.
The seven-ness persists throughout as a characteristic of the technique. The only structure I imposed was to eventually stop increasing, so that a pillbox hat-shape formed.
And then, hat! Made of 20,000 beads, one bead at a time. I don't even know what hit me. It was hypnotic and had a keep-going quality, and it was done when it was done. It was an entirely felt process.
(It was long ago.)
Then there's the other way my brain works--knitting brain, if you will--where there's adherence to a detailed linear plan. A great deal of the effort happens before the real work begins:
The work is caged in a warp of threads (or on the needles, in the case of knitting), and basically there's only one way to go: beginning to end, in rows:
It's done when the pattern says it's done.
These aren't the only brain modes in the world, obviously; just two that I can think about without my brain exploding.
A note on the hat pictures: taken with my Android phone, auto-uploaded to Google, auto-enhanced by Google's magic photo-correcting robot. I cropped and fiddled with them in the Google cloud editor.
I know this isn't the place to pimp Google, but their photo service is fantastic, and currently beating the new Flickr for ease of use and mobile compatibility.
azurelunatic and I were discussing the different brain processes in knitting and crocheting, and yourlibrarian and I were talking about pattern thinking and the autistic brain, and I was having Very Thinky Thoughts.I riffed for a while on my brain, my making-of-things, my peculiar set of limitations and strengths. I took some photos. I coded some links, I wrote and deleted some sentences.
But it's a sunny Sunday in June. I had a bacon cheeseburger for lunch, I've spent my morning beta-ing the work of two writers, both brilliant, and you know what? My brain isn't up to the task of making coherent noises about itself.
So instead, here are some pretty pictures of beadwork, as metaphors for two modes my brain likes to use.
Brain mode one--crochet-brain, if you will--works out from a center, a small starting point.
Here, the center was seven brick-red beads in a loop. There was no pattern, no plan. Just a set of colored beads, a needle and thread, and the number 7.
The seven-ness persists throughout as a characteristic of the technique. The only structure I imposed was to eventually stop increasing, so that a pillbox hat-shape formed.
And then, hat! Made of 20,000 beads, one bead at a time. I don't even know what hit me. It was hypnotic and had a keep-going quality, and it was done when it was done. It was an entirely felt process.
(It was long ago.)
Then there's the other way my brain works--knitting brain, if you will--where there's adherence to a detailed linear plan. A great deal of the effort happens before the real work begins:
The work is caged in a warp of threads (or on the needles, in the case of knitting), and basically there's only one way to go: beginning to end, in rows:
It's done when the pattern says it's done.
These aren't the only brain modes in the world, obviously; just two that I can think about without my brain exploding.
A note on the hat pictures: taken with my Android phone, auto-uploaded to Google, auto-enhanced by Google's magic photo-correcting robot. I cropped and fiddled with them in the Google cloud editor.
I know this isn't the place to pimp Google, but their photo service is fantastic, and currently beating the new Flickr for ease of use and mobile compatibility.