Madeleine Shepherd

@studioknotunknot

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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Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· 16d

Open Studios time again at Coburg House! Visit me and 50ish others artists and makers in our studios in Leith, Edinburgh. I'll have new work, a samples & seconds sale and a demo of the hacked knitting machine - also a large installation in the stairwell. www.coburghouse.co.uk/whats-on#/op...

A photo of an open door into a studio showing a knitting machine and about 4 metres of colourful knitting stretching from the machine out of the the door and across the floor.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Apr 10

Happy anniversary @miketransreal.bsky.social - 29 years of independent bookselling! transreal.wordpress.com/about/

Exterior view of bookshop in 17th century building on a sloping street in Edinburgh. Two large windows with an open door between. Shopfront is painted pale grey. "Transreal" is written in dark blue above each window and "fiction" is written above the door.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Apr 8

If you're in Edinburgh this month, go get some of my #cellularautomata knits from @summerhallarts.bsky.social boutique. #mathematicalknitting #computationalknitting

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Apr 5

Here's my brother being eaten by knitted octopus. Also not bothered.

Photo of a man standing in a messy studio withe windows behind him. He is wearing dark clothing and is holding his arms up, making the horned hand gesture. His head is covered by a knitted octopus, mostly bright orange with green, yellow and orange tentacles, and big black eyes .

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 11

That's the first beginners machine knitting workshop of 2026 done. I was very impressed with the finished neckwamers. I hope both students will be dusting off and setting up their home machines soon. Fancy having a go, too? www.madeleineshepherd.co.uk/section88805...

Slightly angled photo from above two small tables with beginners working at simple knitting machines. The tables are facing each other and you can see the hands of each student working on their projects.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 6

After a holiday season dominated by illness (mine and other people's) and admin, I'm looking forward to getting back into the studio to continue exploring the knitting potential of tile agar patterns in Conway's Game of Life.

A piece of pale green knitting with small repeating patterns in darker grey green, lying on the keyboard of a laptop and partly propped on the screen. The mostly white screen shows the Img2Track software and the chart of one pattern ready to load into my knitting machine (not pictured).

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Dec 18

These wrist warmers have 28 ends to hide per pair. Four can be used for hand stitching the seams. If I had seamed them on the linker I'd have created another 8 ends to sew but would have trapped the original 28 in the seam. Why did I think it wasn't worth getting the linker out for just one pair?

Photo of a white, left hand wearing a yellow and black knittwd wrist warmer. Hand is clutching a similar wrist warmer showing a multitude of loose ends to be finished off.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Nov 22

Get your geek on with knitted cellular automata! Today and tomorrow at the National Galleries Scotland:Portrait www.nationalgalleries.org/event/tea-gr...

Multi coloured scares hanging up at an indoor market. All feature cellular automata knitting.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Nov 8

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Aug 9

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jul 23

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 30

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 26

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 23

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 21

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 21

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 20

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 15

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 11

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 9

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).

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 8

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 6

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 3

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Mar 3

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Feb 15

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Feb 9

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 29

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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 29

"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.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 27

Process photo for machine knitting fans.

Madeleine Shepherd@studioknotunknot· Jan 27

Today's #januarty prompt is #red. Here's some of my #conwaysgameoflife #fairisle knitting using a fair bit of poppy red. #mathscraft #cellularautomata