I finished it! Last week, I finished sewing the ends in on my new Prime Factorization Scarf.
The scarf is similar to my Prime Factorization Sweater, using a new color for each prime factor. For the scarf, though, instead of making a grid of squares representing each number, I used two-row stripes for each factor. I separated each number with two rows of black, which represented the number 1 (since 1 times anything doesn’t change the value.)
I like the way the scarf gives the flow of the numbers. You can look closely at the blue color for 2 and watch it repeat. Then notice how the pink color for 3 repeats a little more slowly. And 5 a little more slowly than that. The scarf goes all the way up to 50.
Here are some sections up close. First, this picture shows 1 through 21:
2 is blue.
3 is pink.
4 = 2 x 2, so it’s two stripes of blue.
5 is yellow.
6 = 2 x 3, so it’s a stripe of blue and a stripe of pink.
7 is purple.
8 = 2 x 2 x 2, so it’s three stripes of blue.
9 = 3 x 3, so it’s two stripes of pink.
10 = 2 x 5, so it’s a stripe of blue and a stripe of yellow.
11 gets a new color, green.
12 = 2 x 2 x 3, so it’s two stripes of blue and a stripe of pink.
And so on….
Here is a picture showing 17 (light pink) through 35:
And finally, 33 to 50:
My earlier posts explained why I chose the pattern I did. I wanted the scarf to be reversible, but it’s not quite as easy to read as plain garter stitch stripes.
What’s next? A cuff-to-cuff cardigan! Only, I want to go higher than 50, so I decided to combine factors in one stripe — unless you have perfect powers of a number. Here’s a preview. I’m working on 33 now. (You can see that since 32 = 2^5, it’s 5 rows of blue.) It’s going to be flamboyantly bright, but I plan to wear my primes with pride!
My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.
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