Sunday, October 2, 2016

Pasta

So I was poking around the inter webs and I saw a picture of a chain comprised for four-sided components and four-sided things make me think of cubes and so after noodling around a bit I made it into a cube and I liked it but it was squishy with the fire-polished rounds and it quickly occurred to me that if I was having difficulty making it firm then 99.9% of people taking my classes would be likely to end up with a puddle of beads so I tried teardrop beads instead of fire-polished beads.

They kinda looked nice but a bit messy and uneven and still squishy.  
Then there was an ill-fated foray into all super duos (below) with an ugly failed attempt at stiffening the corners and a few even more foolish ideas involving internal support none of which made it beyond about a third of the way through until finally I broke out the tiny rondelles (far right above) which made the whole thing just sing.
I mean, it was operatic.

I'm not sure why the rondelles which are not that different in size from the fire-polished beads work so very much better and result in a perfectly firm hollow beaded bead, but they do. Weird. I may need further experiments - oh wait! I did one already: If four-sided units make a nice firm truncated cube then five-sided units should make a nice firm truncated dodecahedron, shouldn't they?
Indeed they do.

2 comments:

Lynn said...

Can't wait for the 12-sided version! Also, I miss you!

Charlene said...

I miss you too!

Hmm, a twelve-sided version would need all sorts of structural scaffolding to avoid collapse. I think I'll pass