Oh, the geekery!

I don't think it's possible to be too geeky with the knitting, do you?


Can you guess what they are? These were made for a friend, who will use them for training and education purposes. With children, even!


DNA helix
Yarn: various bits of leftover aran-ish weight yarn
Needles: 3.5mm dpns
Pattern: Kimberly Chapman's ingenious Baby's First DNA Model

Notes: Well, what can I say, it's a DNA double helix model. The twist is knit right into the backbones, which is awesome. I did ignore the directions for making the base pairs. Putting the whole thing together required more than the standard number of hands, but I eventually managed it. It's a great pattern, and, as I said, ingenious.


Chromosome
Yarn: some leftover Rowan Pure Wool and DB Cathay (I think)
Needles: 3.0mm dpns
Pattern: just two circularly-knit tubes

Notes: This was pretty easy to make. I chose random numbers of rounds for each stripe, stuffed it as I went along, and stopped when I got sick of changing colours. I used Techknitting's jogless stripes method, which works very well. There're a few bits where I wasn't careful about carrying the non-used colour up and a few loose places where you can see a bit of the stuffing (if only I could have found dark-coloured stuffing), but on the whole, pretty good.

The other thing about the chromosome is:


It un-snaps at the link! My friend wanted to be able to talk about crossovers and be able to show a bit of how it happens, so I made the chromosome "openable" to show separation in meiosis. (Or, at least that's what I remember from AP Biology.) It's just a normal snap button closure. If I had more energy, I could have made a few chromosomes, with bits or lengths that unsnapped or un-velcroed that could be exchanged, but you know, there's only so much I'm willing to do.