Dave LeCompte (he/him)
LightNews LightNews
banner
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Dave LeCompte (he/him)
@bigdicedave.bsky.social
23 followers 69 following 84 posts
Game Developer, 3d printerer, dancer, movie-goer, theater-goer, road tripper, loser of found things.

https://bigdicedave.itch.io/
Posts Replies Media Videos
bigdicedave.bsky.social
The two yarn shops I visited were "Bayshore Yarns" in Silverdale, Washington, and "Stranded by the Sea" in Edmonds, Washington.

Both are neat little stores, helpful, friendly staff. I look forward to buying more yarn from each.
Bayshore Yarns in Silverdale, Washington my yarn being rewound at "Stranded by the Sea"
November 30, 2025 at 3:50 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
I made this hat in wheat / cranberry / forest green heather yarn, which has a "New England Christmas" vibe to it.

You can't see, but the cranberry stripe extends down under the brim - if I were to remake this hat, I'd adjust it to show a little more of that stripe.
knit beanie hat, with 20 rows of "wheat" at the top, followed by 20 rows of "forest green heather", followed by a stripe of 10 rows of wheat, then 20 rows of "cranberry", except that the brim of the hat covers up most of the cranberry stripe. top of the hat, after affixing a pom-pom reusing the three colors of yarn from the rest of the hat
November 30, 2025 at 3:50 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
I *only* knit 165 rows, still had enough for a little pom pom at the end. As I was casting off, I dropped a few stitches, but I managed to rescue them using my crochet hook and newfound skills. Also, I hid the mistake inside the hat.
hat and scarf in blue and gray wool hat and scarf in blue and gray wool
November 23, 2025 at 10:30 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Using the #sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine to make a scarf today - I had purchased 4 skeins of some nice wool yarn last spring, but I had avoided making this scarf for several months - in part due to season, in part due to not being satisfied with my skill to finish the ends.
knit scarf in blue and gray wool yarn, with a yardstick adjacent, showing that the scarf is approximately 6 feet in length. wool scarf with alternating bands of blue and gray wool yarn. Bands are made out of this row count: blue 25 gray 50 blue 75 gray 100 blue 75 gray 50 blue 25
November 23, 2025 at 2:57 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Continuing to get the (literal, figurative) dust off the hat-knitting pipeline.

I was having difficulty with the Sentro knitting machine feeling "tight", and producing what I believe are called "tucked" stitches. I wasn't sure if this was a result of gunk accumulating inside. [thread]
Work in progress picture looking down at a Sentro 48-needle knitting machine with two colors of green yarn, and claw weights. Finished knit green hat, with light green for the cap, darker green for the brim Hat with googly eyes placed on top for inspiration - the eyes are not fastened to the hat (yet?), considering other eye-options for this project.
November 19, 2025 at 5:38 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Today's knitting adventure - I disassembled, cleaned, lubed, and reassembled my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine and proceeded to attempt another experimental green hat (see previous post). This hat has 150 rows, which feels maybe a little longer than I was shooting for.
Knit hat in lime green yarn, knit on a circular knitting machine
November 17, 2025 at 3:40 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
New hat for November 2025 - reacquainting myself with my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine, reminding myself the procedures for making a hat, remembering how many rows goes into a comfortable hat.
A knit hat in a lime green color, knit on a 48-needle Sentro circular knitting machine
November 3, 2025 at 7:39 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
beginning drawing the second black quad on the second draft red and black quads complete, ready for the new blue SVG missing blue quad from before now being drawn I've built a greedy algorithm that tries (not very hard) to reduce the penup travel times by picking a next path starting point close to the last path ending point. This leads to hard to predict fill patterns.
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Here you see two red quads and two blue quads. If you looked at the finished work, you know that there are intended to be three blue quads. If I wanted to lie to you, I could say that I'm going to draw the third quad next - but actually, this is an error, and I abandoned this print at about this point. My SVG generation generates one black, one blue, and one red SVG, and I had sent the third blue quad to a debug SVG which doesn't go to the plotter. I hadn't noticed this at generation time, only as the plotter had gone into action, so I reloaded the plotter, regenerated the blue SVG, and started over.
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
beginning to plot the first red quad
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Flow Field Half-Hexagon Quads

Still, largely experimenting with pen swaps and flow fields.

#iDraw #penplotter #flowfield #proceduralart
a hexagon comprising 8 smaller half-hexagon quadrilaterals, in red, blue, and black ink. The quads are filled with flow fields, which look to me a little like wood grain. The red pieces are the smoothest, followed maybe by the blue, then by the black. I find it interesting that I can't tell for certain whether blue is wigglier than the black or vice versa.
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
then, when the black was finished, I took the black pen out of the plotter and inserted a red pen, drew a separate SVG for the red squares
beginning to draw red squares, this time in red, this time mostly vertical I believe that the red flow field has a little more wiggle, a little more angular variance than the black field, just for extra flavor almost done filling in the red squares
September 21, 2025 at 4:48 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
I plotted the black lines between the squares first, then the flowfields for the black squares
pen plotter drawing an 8x8 grid of squares pen plotter filling alternating squares with flow fields, approximately horizontal, using a black pen two rows of black squares completed, starting on the third row
September 21, 2025 at 4:48 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Flow Field Chessboard

I took my flow field code and generated two flow fields - one mostly horizontal, one mostly vertical, then clipped the resulting paths into individual squares. I collected the squares into two SVGs, plotted them with different pens
#idraw #flowfield #procedural #penplotter
pen plotter drawing with flow fields alternately red-vertical and black-horizontal, forming a chessboard. The finished drawing is 8 inches square, each square being an inch on a side.
September 21, 2025 at 4:48 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
"Squared Circles" for 9/16/25
September 16 2025 was a "Pythagorean date", each element a square, the 2-digit year being the sum of the other two numbers. I nested a sequence of 4, 9, 16, 25 circles inside a square.
#idraw #penplotter #circles #pythagoras #procedural
pen plotter drawing of concentric circles, made up of 25, 16, 9, 4, and 1 "beads". The finished work has a vaguely astrological feel. "circle fractal" of circles filling the space in the corner between the ring of 25 circles and the square. I started with the shapes of the left side and bottom side of the drawing, along with the outer circle, then found a circle tangent to all three shapes, which gave me three new roughly triangular regions which I could recursively fill. I proceeded until the circles had got down to 1/20 of an inch. the beginnings of the ring of 25 beads being drawn
September 19, 2025 at 2:16 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
New Flow Field

variation on a theme - constrained the flow field to a circle, constrained the vectors in the field between -35 and 75 degrees, for a more "river" flow visual.

#iDraw #penplotter #generativeart #proceduralart #flowfield
"River" flow field, drawn in blue gel pen, flow lines are largely coherent, mostly going from top left to bottom right of the image. Beginning of drawing the flow field, individual strands are being drawn, some spatial coherence is visible. Nearly finished drawing, a few gaps are visible only a few gaps remain, resembling onion skin
September 15, 2025 at 3:46 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
I also experimented with outputting two SVGs as I implemented this - this is the "debug view", where I use color to indicate the heading of the paths, using a HSV colorspace.
debug output, with heading of the flow field lines encoded to HSV.
September 15, 2025 at 12:31 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Flow Field drawing

Flow field, where the direction of the flow comes from simplex noise. Plotted using blue EnerGel gel pen with an iDraw H SE plotter.

#iDraw #PenPlotter #ProceduralArt #GenerativeArt
Completed drawing, with space-filling curved blue lines following a "flow field", generated from simplex noise Flow field drawing in process - the early drawing has some "tendrils" reaching out to the edge of the draw area, but most of the detail is within a circle - this is a result of the algorithm that generated the "seeds" that lead to the paths, which starts at a point and spirals out. Beginning of the drawing - some long tendrils are visible and many arching short paths connecting some of the tendrils, resembling contour lines from a mountainous region
September 15, 2025 at 12:31 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
A poster for "Math Jam", a get together of recreational math folks mathsjam.com

using Hershey fonts, bridson blue noise, and line segment SDFs.

#iDraw #penplotter #math #mathjam #mathsjam
A poster with the words MATH JAM in large letters, and small numbers and letters filling the rest of the poster, drawn in blue ink.
September 3, 2025 at 3:11 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
#iDraw #penplotter #proceduralart
an exercise in clipping shapes (circles) against other shapes (circles, half-planes) specified as SDFs.

Reminds me a little of a guitar or a fried egg.
a pen plotter drawing of a rectangle around a hexagon around a bunch of small circles, around a pair of medium sized circles, filled with a set of parallel lines. There's some extraneous lines in the upper right hand side that I need to sort out, I think my plotting bed is not quite level.
September 1, 2025 at 1:50 AM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Drawing an Apollonian Gasket with a circle inversion on an UUNA Tek iDraw H A3 pen plotter

#penplotter
apollonian gasket of 13 circles inside a larger circle close up of recursive tangent circle chains circle inversion of the outer gasket
August 22, 2025 at 5:06 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
Three color beanie in white, light green, dark green, on my Sentro 48-hook circular knitting machine. I've been having fun (literally) cranking out hats on this machine, but now and then, I'll get a yarn (or a particular skein) that feels tight on the machine. #sentro #knittingmachine
knit hat, in white, light green, dark green. The bottom of the hat has dropped stitches and some of my most uneven work, inspiring me to try again.
January 21, 2025 at 5:14 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
multicolored hat on Sentro knitting machine multicolored hat with yellow, blue, green, red pom pom
December 28, 2024 at 11:33 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
More #sentro #circularknittingmachine hats - using yarn I bought at Bayshore Yarns in Silverdale, WA.

www.facebook.com/profile.php?...
black/white/gray hat, with black and white pom pom green/blue hat, on Sentr 48 pin circular knitting machine green/blue hat with blue and turquoise pom pom on Sentro knitting machine
December 28, 2024 at 11:33 PM
bigdicedave.bsky.social
"One for them, one for me" - I made a hat for my sister (shh, don't tell her, it's in the mail even now) using a speckly gray yarn and a turquoise blue yarn. I also made a black/white/gray hat for myself. I intend to add a pom pom to the top of my hat.
Blue body hat with heather gray brim on the left, with black and white speckled hat on the right, resting on Sentro 48 circular knitting machine heather gray body hat with turquoise blue brim on the left, with black and white speckled hat on the right, resting on Sentro 48 circular knitting machine
December 24, 2024 at 4:41 AM