Math Monday: Knitted cellular automaton tea cosy

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

Cellular automata are mathematical systems that can generate surprisingly complex patterns from very simple rules. Camilla Fox worked out a way to knit cellular automata patterns by using two colors of yarn. One of the two colors is brought to the front for each stitch according to a simple rule based on the colors of the three stitches in the row above it. The above image shows a tea cosy I commissioned from Fox based on the Rule 110 cellular automaton, which is mathematically interesting because it is proven to be Turing Complete.

A second tea cosy, also following Rule 110, but with a different first row as its random initial condition, leads to a different instance in the same family of patterns.

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