Madeleine Shepherd
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studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Madeleine Shepherd
@studioknotunknot.bsky.social
330 followers 190 following 130 posts
Textile artist, mostly knitting, mostly inspired by mathematics, space exploration and science fiction. Lapsed science communicator. Also, occasional writer and photographer.
Trying not to shout into the void.
www.madeleineshepherd.co.uk
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studioknotunknot.bsky.social
For the next three weekends, you can find my latest work in Coburg House Gallery Shop Spotlight display. The basis for this work is an agar pattern in Conway's Game of Life. It was the subject of new research in 2022. It's all knitted in Aran-weight lambswoolspun and dyed in Scotland.
A collection of knitted accessories displayed on two mannequins, two plinths and a table in a gallery shop setting. Assorted colour combinations of dark blue, pale grey, orange and bright pink in a small all-over repeating pattern. Also display is the cover of issue 5 of the Journal of Scottish Yarn which contains a feature about my mathematical knitting journey.
November 8, 2025 at 12:14 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
All set up and ready for the public!
Stop by and buy.
www.teagreen.co.uk
Photo of a market stall displaying colourful knitting over two levels.
August 9, 2025 at 10:40 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Coburg House Open Studios is 20 years old this year. I've been taking part for 17 of those years. We open on Friday 1st August and you can visit over the rest of the weekend. Hope to see some of you there!

www.coburghouse.co.uk/whats-on#/op...
Flyers for Coburg House Open Studios. Text in top leftgives dates 1st, 2nd & 3rd August 2025 then reads "Coburg 20: two decades of Open Studios". The rest of the image contains a still life of two bangles, a brooch, two metal and wood boxes, a ceramic pot and a crochet handbag in front of an abstract painting.
July 23, 2025 at 1:45 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Obviously I have to go back to my Game of Life Fair Isle project for today's #mathartmarch prompt "game". Here's my knitted portrait of its originator, John Conway, with heraldic bands of pulsars and gliders in traditional Fair Isle colours.
Knitted panel showing a black and white, pixelated, head and shoulders portrait of a white man looking straight at the viewer. He is resting his chin on one hand and is wearing a checked shirt. Above and below the portrait are bands of colourful motifs. Narrow blue stripes with yellow gliders on either side of red stripes with white pulsars.
March 30, 2025 at 5:32 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Here's a #mathartmarch cop out for days 25 (chaos) and 26 (choice). So, today I have made the choice to share a photo of me in front of my chaotic studio desk in its "tidied up for a public event" state!
Photo of an older white woman with grey hair tied back, wearing a flowing, olive green dress and a long orange necklace. She's smiling and is sitting, hands clasped in her lap, in front of a desk piled with papers and other stationery, surrounded by clutter.
March 26, 2025 at 10:13 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Two for one #mathartmarch - prompts 22 and 23 were hexagon and together so here's a knitted hexagon together with a stack of 11 more. They are joined together to make a scarf.
A knitted hexagon made from light turquoise yarn with orange speckles, on the corner of a wooden table. Knitted Hexagons on a wooden table. A folded turquoise and orange hexagon oh the left, joined at its right to a pale pink hexagon with grey and orange speckles. The latter is on the top of a stack of more knitted hexagons.
March 23, 2025 at 11:38 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Font is today's prompt for #mathartmarch. Most folks are interpreting that to mean typeface, but can also mean container or vessel. So here is my single sided surface which can contain stuff. #mobiusbasket
Rectangular image. Background is a fade from beige at the top to white at the bottom. There is a single object in the middle of the image - a high-sided bowl with a broad handle over the top which has been twisted. It's made of pink woollen felt with yellow and blue flecks.
March 21, 2025 at 5:25 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Repetition is the twentieth prompt from #mathartmarch and it suits my Conway's Game of Life Fair Isle knitting perfectly. This design features gliders as a peerie pattern and an oscillator called Jack as the main motifs.

More about the project here:
www.madeleineshepherd.co.uk/gallery_7790...
Close up of one of my Game of Life Fair Isle knitted fabrics. It features narrow stripes of white motifs on red alternating with broader stripes of yellow on mid blue.
March 21, 2025 at 9:42 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
The Knitting Wheel of Fortune - my #mathartmarch offering for "chance".

Conceived as a visualization of randomness with input from visitors who used dice and a wheel to control my knitting in 30 row chunks. I made the pieces live during the event.

madeleineshepherd.blogspot.com/search/label...
Square collage of 6 smaller square images. One is larger than the others in the bottom left corner. It shows two dressmaker's dummies wearing a collection of colourful, textured scarves. Above and to the right are small close up shots of the scarves showing eyelets, cables, ribs and welts in the stitches. The top right corner has an image of the wheel of fortune for choosing the type of stitches.
March 20, 2025 at 9:51 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Triangles in the form of a large geodesic dome made from upcycled plumbing for today's contribution to #mathartmarch

Fawns Reid and I built this in 2001 as a portable dome building activity. We took it to the Orkney Science Festival and a few Edinburgh events. I think it's now in Fawns' garden.
Geodesic dome 5 metres in diameter and 2.5 metres high. Made from white struts and blue joints. Sitting on grass in school grounds in front of a large tree,a care, a pile of colourful fabri and distant buildings.
March 15, 2025 at 10:08 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Playing #mathartmarch catch-up again! Prompt 9 was "growth" so here is my portrait of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. His seminal work,"On Growth and Form" paid the foundations of mathematical biology. In 2017 the portrait hung in the Zoology Museum in University of Dundee.
Square image. White wall. Knitted image of young Victorian gentleman with a long face, trimmed beard and mustache, short hair with a curl over his forehead, and piercing eyes. Just below and in front of the wall hanging is the skeleton of an orangutan, of which we can see the head and shoulders.
March 11, 2025 at 6:10 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Finished Buckyball on its way into @summerhallarts.bsky.social for Edinburgh's final Mini Maker Faire in 2018. It's a shame we don't have events like that here anymore. The intersection of crafts, tech and fun was my natural home. It packed up just as I went freelance. #mathscraft #mathartmarch
Square image of grey sandstone building with a brightly coloured almost spherical knitted patchwork of hexagons and pentagons (purple orange green turquoise).
March 9, 2025 at 9:20 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Knitting the last pentagon for today's #mathartmarch. Today's prompt is pentagon. I doubt I'll ever knit another Buckyball (truncated icosahedron). Sadly my hands aren't up to knitting by hand these days and I haven't figured out the perfect machine knit version.
Knitting in the round on 5 needles, one for each edge of a pentagon. The needles are long enough to meet beyond the stitches forming a five pointed star. The edges of the pentagon have been picked up from the edges of 5 hexagons using purple yarn. The hexagons are knitted in orange, green and turquoise.
March 8, 2025 at 7:03 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Today's prompt for #mathtartmarch is "a single line". The pattern on this cushion is generated from a single line of pixels using Rule 30 from Wolfram's one dimensional cellular automata.
Square image. Grey background. Photo of a square cushion made from knitted fabric in fawn and olive green. There is an irregular, non-repeating pattern of different sizes of small fawn triangles all pointing downwards surrounded by olive and fawn vertical lines. There is a small, white, rectangular maker's label in the top left corner of the cushion.
March 6, 2025 at 7:55 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
On a square grid for #mathartmarch 2

All of my Fair Isle type knitting design work starts with squared paper. Knitted stitches are not square but it's a good approximation and in this case it doesn't matter. The patterns are generated in Conway's Game of Life as pixels and each one maps to a stitch
The bottom two thirds of the picture is a piece of grey and black knitting with a 6 by 6 stitch repeat pattern of squares and single stitches. There's a little bit of similar fabric in yellow and grey above on the left. The top part of the image shows my working notes about creating the pattern on square grid paper with some writing and the repeat pattern coloured in grey.
March 3, 2025 at 10:13 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Circles for #mathartmarch 1

Circles of embroidery making mounds in knitting by exploiting the elasticity of the knitting. This sample eventually became part of work about quantum mechanics but I can't find a photo.
Close up of grey knitted fabric with two rows of mixed sizes bumps running vertically top to bottom. The bumps are each encircled by several rows of sewn stitches in shades of brown.
March 3, 2025 at 9:50 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Get your mitts on a pair of my Glider wrist warmers in @logan_malloch. Warm and soft Shetland wool covered in gliders from Conway's Game of Life.
#wristwarmers #contemporarycraft #conwaysgameoflife #cellularautomata #mathematicalknitting #mathscraft #equationcore #aas #appliedartscotland #aasmember
Four pairs of knitted wrist warmers on a white background arranged like vertical coloured stripes. Left to right, yellow on dark orange, dark brown on yellow, yellow on dark brown, red on grey. Each wrist warmer is covered in a regular array of small motifs.
February 15, 2025 at 7:56 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
One of two stone wyverns in the Grange. Maybe not that mundane but definitely hidden in plain sight.
Small, weathered, sandstone wyvern on an ionic column surrounded by trees, hedge and ivy.
February 9, 2025 at 7:40 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Here's a better picture of the green trefoil knot sitting on a park bench.
Knitted trefoil knot in shades of green and yellow. It's about a third of the image area and is at the bottom right. The background is black and brown stripes in perspective receding from bottom to top.
January 29, 2025 at 1:33 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
"There was a curve, there was a formula" Talking Heads
A couple of hand-knitted seamless knots and my favourite studio mug for #januarty #curve
A cream tabletop with green knitting on the left, a dark grey mug of coffee in the centre and striped knitting (green, blue, purple) on the right. Both knitted items are small textured twisted loops. The mug is printed with equations from physics and mathematics.
January 29, 2025 at 10:40 AM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Process photo for machine knitting fans.
January 27, 2025 at 10:48 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
Today's #januarty prompt is #red. Here's some of my #conwaysgameoflife #fairisle knitting using a fair bit of poppy red.

#mathscraft #cellularautomata
January 27, 2025 at 10:44 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
The knitted shoreline was knitted for a community art work called Knit The Shoreline as part of the Edinburgh Shoreline Project in 2018. edinburghshoreline.org.uk
For the last year or so it's been on tour with their 100 Species exhibition. I just got it back this week.
My full Edinburgh Shoreline knitted map hanging above the doors and below the rafters in the Heart of Newhaven community centre.
January 24, 2025 at 4:23 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
A couple of days late but here's something for the #januarty #monochrome prompt. It's a small part of a knitted stylized map showing Crammond Island. The full piece covers the whole of Edinburgh city's shoreline and is around 4 metres long and 60 centimetres tall.
January 24, 2025 at 2:19 PM
studioknotunknot.bsky.social
So pleased to be part of the Woolly Good Gathering in Edinburgh on 4th April. Come along and find out about machine knitting.

Ticket sales opened this evening and they're going fast.

www.woollygood.co.uk/the-woolly-g...
January 22, 2025 at 9:05 PM