Saturday, April 16, 2005

what we really need.....fibonacci numbers....

I went with my friend Babs to a shop called the range today. What can I say about the range... well for a start it is in one of those horrible out of town shopping complexes, the sort you can only go to if you have a car (or a friend with a car!). It has the obligatory supermarket and the obligatory FatDonalds. The supermarket and the cashpoint is so far from the other shops that you find yourself driving from one carpark to another (how sad is that?). You wouldn't want to walk round there anyway - the scenery is not exactly beautiful even when it is not pouring with rain. Acres of tarmac punctuated by trolley bays and the odd paving slab. Very big, very flat and full of cars...mmmmm mmm.

Anyway the Range is the kind of superstore where you go to buy one thing and come out with something completely different, and on the way you find twenty things that you absolutely need but had forgotton about until you saw them. It is also the kind of store that has a myth perpetuated about it (who knows where it started?) that it has loads of good stuff and all that good stuff is far cheaper than you can buy it anywhere else. Well for weeks I had been slowing buying into this myth...I have been drip fed it by friend after friend...oh you must go to the Range...they have a great selection of art materials...their canvases and frames are sooo cheap...etc etc. Imagine my disappointment when I discover it's just the same as any other big store...and no cheaper. I still saw lots of stuff I really needed! Although I did manage to stop myself buying too much. It's all stuff you think you need but never get around to buying...well probably you never get around to buying it because YOU DON'T NEED IT!!!!!!

Well I have to confess I did buy three really useful things...
1. A DELUXE LITTER TRAY (COLOUR PALE LILAC).....why I hear you cry...well for making felt in of course!
2. A square of black felt for 29p....why.....to make a new nose for my son's cuddly sea otter!
3. A small green glittery lined notebook...why...just because I could......

And what of fibonacci numbers?
Well that's another story entirely and it all started with the making of a wall out of a metal grid that has plastic and fabric woven into it in spiral shapes. This morning I started thinking about spirals and their meaning. I knew that spirals are often attributed with spritual significance. In some celtic mythology the spiral symbolises the continuity of life and spiritual growth. I started looking at spirals and their meaning on the Internet and quite soon came across Fibonacci and his numbers
'The Fibonacci sequence exhibits a certain numerical pattern which originated as the answer to an exercise in the first ever high school algebra text. This pattern turned out to have an interest and importance far beyond what its creator imagined. It can be used to model or describe an amazing variety of phenomena, in mathematics and science, art and nature. The mathematical ideas the Fibonacci sequence leads to, such as the golden ratio, spirals and self- similar curves, have long been appreciated for their charm and beauty, but no one can really explain why they are echoed so clearly in the world of art and nature.'
Will probably write some more about this another day as it is time for bed now!!!

No comments: