Leigh Tate

Experiment #4

This experiment was prompted by a comment on my fiber blog, where I noted that the stripes I got from my photos were random until I made copies and put them together for a larger design. That larger design always had a pattern. Someone then challenged me to see if I could repeat those stripes in a random way.

Here's the image I started with, another sunrise.

Using the method I did for the other experiments, here are the stripes I ended up with

A set of random stripes from the original photo.

Then I made copies of the image in my photo editor, and tried to arrange them in a random way. Try as I might, everything I made had a pattern. I gave up. But after thinking about it for a while, I gave it another try and finally came up with this



I have to say, it was a lot of work to get a larger set of random stripes! But it was an interesting experiment and got me to thinking about how I'm envisioning permaculture weaving and what it means to take inspiration from nature. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I think it's going to be an interesting journey.

When we speak of permaculture design, we're usually looking at designing acreage, a front yard, or a garden. So we look at visible patterns to imitate in our design. When I began to think about permaculture weaving, I wasn't sure what that would look like, so I've been trying to figure that out. I can say it means using natural fibers and colors, but what does it mean in terms of designing a weaving draft? I'm not sure, but as I explore, these are the kinds of questions that pop up.

In another forum, I'm doing a study in stripes - Inspiration from Nature: Stripes. I'm applying a human method to get color stripes from photos. The result is a set of random stripes. But when I duplicate them to make a larger design, a pattern always emerges.

Perhaps "random" is what we see when we focus on details instead of the big picture.

Les, I've been thinking about this. The pattern may be the seasonal rhythm, i.e. the seasonal cycle. Deciduous trees, for example display a pattern of growth and dormancy, with new leaves and later falling dead leaves making a seasonal pattern.

That's my first thoughts trying to make sense of what I see and how it answers my question.

Anne Miller wrote:Wouldn't my examples be non-pattern?  If not, what would they be called?

Anne Miller wrote:All my trees are random.

All of my grass is random.

All the rocks and cactus are randomly place here and there.

Anne, I have to say I think they are. So tree branches are said to be a branching pattern, but there is no pattern to where the trees grow, how grass grows, or where rocks and cactus appear.

I've been thinking about this and here's an example I've come up with.



I see no pattern in these fallen leaves, either in how they fell or where, nor in their colors other than they are all shades of brown. They fell from the trees randomly and lie on the ground randomly.

Pattern definitely exists in nature, and that's what we imitate and use in permaculture design. For design purposes, I suppose we tend to ignore the rest.

Anne Miller wrote:This has some thing to do with the way the word is used,

Leigh, how are you using the word? A verb, adverb, noun?r what?

Anne, I'm meaning non-pattern. In permaculture design we identify patterns (like I listed in my opening post) but I'm not sure about non-pattern. What I'm trying to ask is, does anything in nature develop in a non-patterned way? Or maybe another way to put it is in a non-ordered way.

In Bill Mollison's Permaculture Design Manual, he mentions irregular patterns called fractals. Examples he gives are things like snowflakes, but also scatter patterns like lightning strikes. Lightning looks disorderly and random, but is actually a fractal. So like Burra says, it's so complex that our brains may not recognize it as a pattern.

I'm asking because I'm delving into permaculture weaving and trying to figure out how to apply natural patterns to weaving design. In thinking about this, I ended up with the question, is anything in nature not a pattern (random)?

Nancy Reading wrote:Although we believe we understand some processes there is probably more going on that we don't understand, and those we think are random maybe one day we will understand the rules governing those too.

That's what I'm wondering. I'm asking because perhaps another Permie has a better understanding and more insight than I have. Does that make sense?

In permaculture design, we speak of patterns:  waves, spirals, lobes, branches, nets, scatters, cloud forms, tessellations, Fibonacci sequences, etc. But does everything in nature fit a pattern? Is anything what we'd call random? I've tended to think not as I study permaculture, but I find myself asking the question. I'm interested in other Permies' opinions about this.

I bought one of these awhile back . . .



It's based on a rocket type design and only needs sticks to get good heat. We used it after Hurricane Helene knocked out our power two years ago and it was too warm to fire up the wood cookstove in the house. The downside is that it needs constant feeding.

It's great for boiling a kettle of water, a stove-top coffee percolator, or making a one-pot soup or stew. I pair it with my haybox cooker for cooking all sorts of things.

Experiment #4

For this one, I chose a photo with muted winter colors.



I started by adding guidelines, which helped me visualize the width and placement of the stripes.





Using the color picker, however, was pretty random, and I wasn't always satisfied that the solid color matched my impression from the original photo. So I enlarged it so I could see the individual pixels.



That really streamlined the process. Here's what I ended up with.



From there I made a copy, flipped it vertically and put the two together.



Another nice throw rug or hand towel!

Repeated it looks like a design for fabric.



The guidelines and magnified image worked really well.

Jill, thank you! Makes me even more inspired. I hope you'll share what you do!

What about biochar? Scientists reckon it was originally made as Terra Preta, something like 2000 years ago in South America.