Introducing Meredith Davey
A new star is rising.
 You’ve never heard of Meredith Davey. Most knitters haven’t. She’s a wonderfully creative and energetic baseball fanatic astrophysicist who absolutely loves knitting gloves. And the more intricate and challenging the pattern, the more she enjoys creating them.
Judging by the reception Meredith received for her original glove designs while attending TKGA’s Spring Knit and Crochet Show in Portland, Oregon, she’s going to become very well known for her clever, complicated patterns.
“Knitting is my sanctuary,” she tells us. “When I design, it is my creative release.”
That creative release looks more like a super nova to her admirers: tiny stitches that criss-cross, loop over, loop under, zig-zag and turn around in every possible configuration to create the most spectacularly original and remarkably complex patterns you’ve seen.
“Although my designs look fairly advanced,” she insists, “I tend to write thorough and explicit directions, and I rely heavily on charts, which I think people find easier to follow. I’d like to think that an adventurous intermediate knitter can do any of my patterns.”
An adventurer herself, Meredith began knitting when she was only five years old. Her mother taught her the basics, and then her unusual approach to knitting evolved over time. She says she always enjoyed challenging herself intellectually, both academically and creatively, and she always found knitting patterns and charts easy to follow.
“My curiosity will tend to be sparked by something with which I’m unfamiliar,” she tells us. “Consequently, over the years, I guess I just kept picking up new techniques to the point where I was able to improvise”
Now, her unusual approach is almost entirely self taught. She thinks of herself as a “guerilla knitter” and when you examine the intricacy and creativity of her patterns, mostly created on needles size two or smaller, you realize why that title is appropriate.
“I probably design primarily for intermediate to advanced knitters. I find there is a dearth of patterns geared to that range,” she says. “I’ve had conversations with other advanced knitters who have bemoaned the remarkable lack of availability of advanced patterns. It’s as if this new ‘renaissance’ in knitting has led knitting publishers to believe that we’re ALL beginners. Heck, even the beginners aren’t really beginners anymore. I think we can start publishing for a broader range.”
This is what gave her the initiative to begin developing designs. She learned over time is that the basis of any good design -- even the most complex one -- comes from a good understanding of basic structure.
 “You have to understand how stitches go together — not just what any particular stitch is doing, but how all of the stitches around it are contributing,” she says. “Coming up with well structured pattern can take a bit of thought and preparation. It’s not unusual, for example, to have to set up a particular stitch a row (or even two) in advance. In a way, it reminds me of the way people plan moves in chess.”
If this sounds like a very analytical and methodical approach to knitting designs, it’s likely because Meredith is a Ph.D. Astrophysicist who works for the Smithsonian Institution.
“Primarily, I study the corona of the Sun and these huge interplanetary plasma storms generated by activity in the corona. It turns out that these storms—which we call “coronal mass ejections”—actually have a huge impact on us and our technology. They affect astronauts, satellites, radio communications, cell phones, power grids, the GPS network, et cetera. Being able to accurately forecast them is a little like being able to accurately forecast hurricanes. We even refer to them and their effects as ‘space weather.’” Photo above right: Meredith as Solar Girl.
She tells us that her knitting design is, “In juxtaposition to my astrophysics career—a creative yin to my scientific yang, if you will. However, I have certainly used the data I study as inspiration for creative projects. The Worldwind Gloves are an obvious example. The idea for using a tapered helix came from a well-known observation of a particular coronal mass ejection.” Photo left: The solar activity that inspired Worldwind Gloves. Photo below right: Intricate Worldwind Gloves.
Because her job demands intense study and concentration, she says she uses knitting to relax and to remain focused.
“I certainly knit to relax and get away from work. However, I also knit at work all the time — usually during meetings and scientific talks. I won’t do anything really complicated, generally just a basic sock or glove that I can work on without having to look down all the time. I find that doing something like that with my hands really keeps me focused and helps me concentrate; I’m more likely to follow what’s being talked about and contribute to the discussion. I like to think of it as the knitting equivalent of doodling.”
To Meredith, knitting is mathematical. Implicit in even the most basic knitting patterns are multiplication, division, and fractions.
“The educator in me would love to see knitting used as a vehicle for teaching math at the elementary school level. On a much more advanced level, knitting is already being used in colleges and graduate schools to teach about multiple dimensions; for instance, it is quite easy to find patterns on the Internet to knit four-dimensional Klein Bottles.”
(Okay, I’ll admit it. I had to search “Klein Bottle” on Wikipedia to see a diagram. All I can say is that it reminded me of Poincare’s Nightmare…which I also don’t understand.)
Meredith says she prefers to work on gloves because of their portability; she likes to knit wherever she goes. While she won the 2007 knitting portion of the Stitch 'n Pitch Design Contest with her Baseball Socks (that you can download for free on her web site, www.meredithknitting.com) she prefers the changes that are required every couple of inches when knitting gloves.
 
For inspiration she looks to nature or architecture and finds ways to interpret them in knitting. Photo left: Sean's Qandahar Gloves were designed for Meredith's cousin, a Captain in the
United States Marine Corps who was stationed in Afghanistan.
“Some of my more recent inspirations have come from astronomical observations, English cathedral architecture, traditional celtic knotwork, and my friend’s garden,” she tells us. My Worldwind Gloves design consists of is a single, repeated, intersecting tapered helix. It’s mathematically brilliant, and (I think) incredibly beautiful.”
The fibers she chooses are merino or merino blends, particularly merino-silk or standard superwash merino-nylon sock yarn. Lately, she’s been using a variety of fibers for spring and summer wear and tells us she’s got some great plans for hand-dyed silk, bamboo and tencel.
Because the stitches are so gorgeously intricate, she prefers to use solid or monochromatic semi-solid fingering weight yarn.
“I really like the extremely subtle variegation of ‘solid’ hand-dyed yarn. Highly-twisted yarn is also very nice for well-defined cables; plus, it tends to be stronger and pill less.”
Currently, Meredith is working on designs for colorwork baseball-themed gloves. She’s also trying her hand at bead knitting by attempting to splash fireworks all over a pair of dark, over-dyed gloves. Whatever she’s developing, we know it will be fantastically complex, sophisticated and mathematically brilliant. We asked Meredith if she plans to complete a book with her gorgeous glove designs. Photo right: Meredith at a baseball game.
“That’s an interesting possibility,” she told us. “As far as I know, at present, there are no books out there dedicated exclusively to glove designs. The closest you get are ‘mitten and glove’ books, which focus largely on mittens, with a few glove patterns. It might be interesting to do something along the lines of Cookie A’s new ‘Sock Innovations’ book, but about gloves.”
While I can’t compute the trajectory of solar flares or the transit of planets in their orbits, I think I can safely predict that Meredith Davey is going to be the first astrophysicist knitting designer to achieve international stardom.
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