Felix Klien was a mathematician in the 1800s. He drew a diagram (photo 6) of the fractals in the reflections of 5 variously sized reflective spheres. With computer programs, people have been able to redo his project and show that he was amazingly accurate.

Photo 7 shows how his spheres were arranged and the blue outline is what is being worked out in the blanket.

I added some color to the diagram, trying to capture which reflections were from which sphere. It’s not perfect. It got confusing - especially as the circles became tiny.

The five spheres from largest to smallest (light/dark): Lavender/Brown, Pink/Magenta, Blue/Blue-Purple, Yellow-Green/Green-Blue, Yellow/Orange

I’m double knitting it - you can see the two different sides/color schemes in the first and second photos. There is a basic color, a reflection color, and an ‘opposite side’ basic color and reflection color for each of the 5 spheres.

The fifth photo gives an idea of all the bobbins I’m fooling around with. (These are wide photos - the edges are cut off unless you click on the photo.)

The last photo is my knitting graph and if you should feel like trying it, you can use it. The design took about 3 months - and when I get obsessed about something like this, I spend hours per day mapping out the design. It’s well worth it - figuring out things like this makes me feel alive.
When finished it will be 540 rows of 300 stitches.

I knit it for about 7 months then it went on hold for awhile - it takes a little over an hour for one row and it’s hard to make that kind of time commitment to one sitting.

Knitting circles is hard. I’m pleased that they’re actually coming out as circles. I worked hard to get the gauge right, but as you can see from the graph I’m using, I couldn’t translate it onto the paper, so I had to wait until it was in the works to see if I had actually gotten the math right. So, I’m happy about that.

Switching colors intarsia-style while double-knitting is hard. I keep trying different methods and nothing keeps it from showing and sometimes creating a large first stitch. Perhaps this is why I can’t find anybody doing any intarsia-style double knitting anywhere, not to mention any advice on how to make it better.

My first goal was to have it completed by 2019.
As of 12-10-19, my new, revised goal is to simply get it completed - perhaps by 2021.

Colorways (light / dark):
Iris & Clematis (Background light / Background dark)
Haze & Merlot (lavender / brown)
Blossom & Huckleberry (pink / magenta)
Bluebell & Indigo (blue / blue-purple)
Sagebrush & Tidepool (green / teal)
Custard & Salsa (yellow / orange)
Green Tea & Opal (green-yellow / green-blue)

Indra’s Net: It’s the universe. It’s everything reflected in everything else. It’s attachment and love and time and gravity. It’s life starting out as some inexplicable spark in one cell, then dividing over and over, recording itself into physical DNA, enclosing itself in a physical container, protecting itself with relationships and attachments, evolving its physical containers over eons, expanding, growing, and yet, still remaining that one life. We are one.