Blue Heron Knittery

08/14/2026

Onita is on a roll getting projects finished. What is your ideal rainy day. Sarah likes to watch a British murder mystery with a cat or two and knit.

08/13/2026

08/12/2026

WIP Wednesday. Summers are so busy. If you have something on your needles, hooks, cross stitch or sewing machine. We would love to see your WIPs.

08/07/2026

It's Finished Friday! Onita has finished this wrap using 2 different colors of Fiji yarn. Please share your finished projects.

08/06/2026

Teaser Thursday. These beauties are now in the shop. We asked for Dyer's choice from Shelby Strings. Shelby Strings is a family run Indy dyer from Ankeny Ia. Sarah was going to DesMoines so stopped by to see the dye studio and pick up yarn. All are fi*****ng weight in 3 different bases. The picture doesn't do these justice you need to see them in person!

07/31/2026

For generations, some of the world's brightest mathematicians were trying to explain a shape that almost seemed to defy reality. Hyperbolic geometry—where space curves away from itself like ruffled lettuce or coral—was notoriously difficult to visualize. Professors folded paper, sliced models from cardboard, and carefully assembled delicate constructions that often tore apart before a semester was over. It was one of mathematics' most frustrating teaching problems.

The breakthrough didn't come from a laboratory. It came with a crochet hook.

In 1997, Latvian mathematician Daina Taimina was searching for a better way to teach her students when she noticed something unexpected. By adding stitches at regular intervals while crocheting, the fabric refused to stay flat. Instead, it rippled and curled into the very shape mathematicians had struggled for decades to demonstrate.

It looked almost too simple to be taken seriously.

Some colleagues initially assumed the colorful yarn models were little more than clever crafts. But the mathematics was exact. Every carefully placed increase produced an authentic hyperbolic surface—one that students could hold, bend, and examine from every angle without destroying it. Suddenly, an abstract concept that had baffled generations became something you could pass around a classroom.

The idea spread far beyond mathematics departments. Scientists used the models to explain everything from coral reefs and sea slugs to the folds of kale leaves and certain biological structures found in nature. Artists embraced the unexpected beauty of the forms, while educators around the world abandoned fragile paper models in favor of crocheted ones that lasted for years.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is that one of the most elegant advances in teaching advanced mathematics didn't require a supercomputer or expensive technology. It required recognizing that an ancient textile craft could solve a modern mathematical problem—a reminder that breakthroughs sometimes appear where no one thinks to look, until someone is willing to see them differently.

07/30/2026

New at Pulpit Rock Brewery. It would be sweet if they were thinking about Blue Heron Knittery when it was brewing. Yarn also is a nod to New Zealand a term for conversing "having a yarn".

07/22/2026

WIP Wednesday! What is in your needles?

07/19/2026

New markdowns added for Ridiculous days. Our sales are still going strong until 4 today!!!