2017June24 UPDATE NOTE: The original PDF was missing the instruction to join the cast-on edge in the round. The file has been corrected and updated.

A friend recently went on a vacation to Scotland and while touring National Museums Scotland in Glasgow, photographed the bust of Lord Kelvin currently residing there. The ideas of science, engineering, learning, progress, transportation, modern idea transmission, and ingenuity rattled around my mind for a few days while I cast about trying to come up with a new knitting project.

The fact she’s a professional photographer taking a photo of Lord Kelvin’s bust with modern technology is a lovely, small nod to scientific progress and a testament to her sense humor.

Her whirl-wind trip, filled with little down-time for recuperation between stops, gave birth to this variation of what was originally a 10 stitch pattern using two yarn-overs per row and rest rows. {it may be an older, Esperanto (?!) stitch dictionary, though I’m not certain; only guessing based on the symbols used to chart the pattern, some of the few printed words shown, and the printing style of the photographed pages, found somewhere long ago in a dusty corner of the internet}.

While not an entirely accurate representation of Kelvin–Helmholtz waves, it’s the best descriptor I could come up with in the moment for the stitch pattern, and it seemed an apt tribute to my friend’s vacation and the memories she shared.