crochet astragaloi

[alexseanchai]

I'm trying to work out how to crochet—if you think of astragaloi as the great-grandmothers of modern dice, you'll be right on the money. Envision a rectangular prism; the ends are too small to land on when rolling the thing. The sides are two wide and two narrow, and each pair has one convex and one concave. (I'm not trying to design the crochet pattern any closer than that to actual astragaloi. It's not happening.)

The main design problem here, as you might guess, is keeping the concave sides concave even after sewing the sides together and stuffing the thing with polyfill. I'm wondering if thick-gauge jewelry wire threaded through the stitches would work out okay. But the gauge of the wire would have to work with the gauge of the crochet...

Opinions?

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Just thinking at you. Firstly -- I'm assuming you are going to be crocheting so that the sides are naturally concave, so you don't need commentary on that. My experience with making bun nets is that it will naturally want to curve one one way and not the other, so my guess would be to make sure that the direction it wants to go is the way that you sew it up. And the next thought is that a tight piece of thread threaded through the outside edges and tied off should help stop it moving/flexing the other way unless pushed too hard.

I like the idea of something reinforcing. I've not worked with wire, so I don't have ideas there (although I know my friend sqbr used to do wire crochet, not sure if anything in their blog might be useful). I went wandering the internet to see. Cardboard for flat I've seen before, and this has ideas for convex options. this one might have some idea of key words to search for?

I was wondering about starch as an option, or sewing a reinforcing piece for behind? If you wet block it on a mould such as a plastic bag (bread bags are what we used in school art) filled with beans/rice/flour/other option that will hold the shape (I would say wet sand, but from memory you live in an apartment, so that might not be easy to source) maybe it will hold shape better?

[alexseanchai]

Stuffing with beans instead of polyfill might actually work better, now your first link mentions it! And if I use a natural fiber instead of acrylic— :-D

Hm. I wonder if I threaded a yarn bit through the concave bits to the adjacent pieces, so that the concave bits couldn't pop themselves convex...? —which is what you just said isn't it

[kelkyag]

Looking at some pictures (so possibly not the shape you actually want), I wonder whether keeping the stuffed core small (or even very tightly crochet and hollow) and making the edges of the concave surfaces a single layer curving out from the edges of the hollow form would work?

[curiosity]

Using front loop only or back loop only stitches will make a ridge. From there you can stuff. If the concave sides are opposite each other, why not just sew through and pull the stitches tight?

[alexseanchai]

hmmm maybe? :)

[alexseanchai]

The concave sides are not opposite, no. But thanks :)

[frith_in_thorns]

I would do concave by putting some tension stitches through the centre after stuffing to pull it into shape -- I did this when I was making a deflector dish for a crochet starship.

[fred_mouse]

Ooh, maybe 'sew' the concave side(s) to the opposite side? As in, from either the middle, or a small ring, sew across to the other side with long loops the length you want them apart?

But yes, if weight isn't an issue, beans might do some of the job.

[alexseanchai]

oooh hmm :)