Please help me brainstorm "mystery" motifs!
May 26, 2024 2:45 PM Subscribe
I write crochet patterns for little pictorial motifs ("patches"). Normally my patterns are heavily illustrated, but it's also fun to do "Secret Patches" with just written notation, so the maker doesn't know what the motif is going to be until they've made it (kind of liked a crocheted "Vertex" puzzle). I want to do a collection of these, with all the motifs relating in some way to the theme of "secrets" or "mysteries" ("enigmas," "puzzles," etc.) What should the motifs depict?
You don't need to worry about this, but if it helps, the technique is called interlocking filet crochet, and images need to be kept relatively simple. My patterns use two colours, outline and background/fill. If you can draw it on a letter-sized piece of .25" graph paper using only horizontal, vertical and 45° lines, I can turn it into a pattern. Text is doable but needs to be very short (maximum 10 characters per line, realistically). Motifs are worked from bottom to top, so there's potential for fun misdirection that way.
Most of my own ideas are of the "history's mysteries" or "dubiously paranormal" variety (the kinds of things you'd expect to see discussed on a 90s History Channel "documentary" with "unexplained" in the title). I feel like there are a lot of STEM-fields and pop/geek culture options in particular that would never occur to me!
You don't need to worry about this, but if it helps, the technique is called interlocking filet crochet, and images need to be kept relatively simple. My patterns use two colours, outline and background/fill. If you can draw it on a letter-sized piece of .25" graph paper using only horizontal, vertical and 45° lines, I can turn it into a pattern. Text is doable but needs to be very short (maximum 10 characters per line, realistically). Motifs are worked from bottom to top, so there's potential for fun misdirection that way.
Most of my own ideas are of the "history's mysteries" or "dubiously paranormal" variety (the kinds of things you'd expect to see discussed on a 90s History Channel "documentary" with "unexplained" in the title). I feel like there are a lot of STEM-fields and pop/geek culture options in particular that would never occur to me!
Ooh, and a little old fashioned medicine bottle with skull and crossbones on it!
posted by MiraK at 3:24 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
posted by MiraK at 3:24 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
What I'm visualizing for the more complicated suggestions is something like ASCII art? For example here's an example of a very complicated gun that could be vastly simplified with less detail and also rendered using horizontal, vertical, and 45 degree angle lines only even though this image uses parentheses and dots. I could probably find a better example but I wanted a pixellated-ish example to show you real quick.
posted by MiraK at 3:33 PM on May 26
posted by MiraK at 3:33 PM on May 26
A question mark?
posted by Archipelago at 3:44 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
posted by Archipelago at 3:44 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
I know someone who has a hand-knitted scarf with a personal signifier picked out in binary code using a contrasting colour. Could you work in something like that, or any other kind of visualisable pattern code (like morse) and hide a message or motto in the design?
posted by terretu at 4:28 PM on May 26
posted by terretu at 4:28 PM on May 26
What a great idea!
Tarot motifs
Crystal ball
Heiroglyphics
A cloak would be tough in filet crochet, but maybe a dagger?
Motifs from the Winchester Mystery House windows
Sphinx
Mothman or other cryptids
Ouija planchette
UFO
posted by corey flood at 7:04 PM on May 26 [3 favorites]
Tarot motifs
Crystal ball
Heiroglyphics
A cloak would be tough in filet crochet, but maybe a dagger?
Motifs from the Winchester Mystery House windows
Sphinx
Mothman or other cryptids
Ouija planchette
UFO
posted by corey flood at 7:04 PM on May 26 [3 favorites]
More ideas:
Zodiac/planet signs from astrology
Eye of Providence
Old-fashioned lock and/or key
Clock face with unusual markings
posted by wanderingmind at 10:21 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
Zodiac/planet signs from astrology
Eye of Providence
Old-fashioned lock and/or key
Clock face with unusual markings
posted by wanderingmind at 10:21 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
At that size, you can do a mini-QR which will of course lead to either the classic rick-roll, or whatever other fun findings you want. A larger QR would have to be very very short sequences but you can have it reveal a text phrase vs a bit.ly URL (I am trying to make a barcode/QR that becomes a sleepy phrase).
Crossword puzzle grids would work beautifully, if you had one grid and then another smattering of motifs with the visual clues to the words that solved the crossword.
Labyrinth and mazes are great fun and can be generated to fit. Or you could look for famous known mazes and labyrinths and grid them.
Some tesselations will work well on a 2-colour grid. I would also find some very cute graphs - https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html is a classic, but there are some other fun graphs where you could do the equation in one motif and the graph in another.
I hope you share these somewhere, they sound so much fun!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:53 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
Crossword puzzle grids would work beautifully, if you had one grid and then another smattering of motifs with the visual clues to the words that solved the crossword.
Labyrinth and mazes are great fun and can be generated to fit. Or you could look for famous known mazes and labyrinths and grid them.
Some tesselations will work well on a 2-colour grid. I would also find some very cute graphs - https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html is a classic, but there are some other fun graphs where you could do the equation in one motif and the graph in another.
I hope you share these somewhere, they sound so much fun!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:53 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
Three question marks, the sign of Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:19 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:19 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
A keyhole.
posted by demi-octopus at 11:28 PM on May 26 [4 favorites]
posted by demi-octopus at 11:28 PM on May 26 [4 favorites]
If you search on 'optical illusion drawings' you will find some simple drawings of objects that can't be made in real life.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:46 AM on May 27 [2 favorites]
posted by SemiSalt at 4:46 AM on May 27 [2 favorites]
What a fun idea!
I've always liked the woo-factor of Masonic symbols:
All seying eye
Square and compass
Blazing star
Gavel
Beehive
sheaf of corn
Coffin
You could also research some mystery cults of the ancient world.
posted by sohalt at 7:40 AM on May 27
I've always liked the woo-factor of Masonic symbols:
All seying eye
Square and compass
Blazing star
Gavel
Beehive
sheaf of corn
Coffin
You could also research some mystery cults of the ancient world.
posted by sohalt at 7:40 AM on May 27
The text
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on May 27 [2 favorites]
P = NP(Possibly with a question mark over the equal sign. It’s a mathematical mystery with immediate real world implications.)
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on May 27 [2 favorites]
Or even the continuum hypothesis, a short equation but with a subscript to a superscripted Hebrew character — fourth para here.
posted by clew at 9:48 AM on May 27
posted by clew at 9:48 AM on May 27
DNA
Three suns, referring to the Three-Body Problem
Something from Conways Game of Life, which had undecidable questions and is natively gridded
posted by clew at 9:57 AM on May 27
Three suns, referring to the Three-Body Problem
Something from Conways Game of Life, which had undecidable questions and is natively gridded
posted by clew at 9:57 AM on May 27
The Trystero post-horn
A jackalope
The Uffington White Horse (or one of the other chalk figures--even the ones now known to be more recent, like the Long Man of Wilmington or the Cerne Abbas Giant, are still treated as mysterious)
Agents Mulder & Scully
posted by miles per flower at 5:05 PM on May 27 [1 favorite]
A jackalope
The Uffington White Horse (or one of the other chalk figures--even the ones now known to be more recent, like the Long Man of Wilmington or the Cerne Abbas Giant, are still treated as mysterious)
Agents Mulder & Scully
posted by miles per flower at 5:05 PM on May 27 [1 favorite]
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- fingerprint
- Sherlock Holmes hat/pipe
- shoe print
- cigar with smoke
- chalk outline of body
- an eye
- lips with a vertical finger across them like the "shh" emoji 🤫 but with just lips and finger
- jigsaw puzzle piece
- an empty but ornate painting frame
- a knife? Not sure you can do this with just one color against your background but ... hmm..
- a gun!
- flower on a long stem, but stem is broken?
- headstone
- a black cat, elongated like a shadow
I don't know the particular style of crochet you are referring to but I could make all of these stylized motifs using mosaic crochet, so I hope they work for you!
posted by MiraK at 3:18 PM on May 26