Reinventing The Honeycomb

Day 60: Every winter, there comes a point when I say, "What in the world am I going to do for a blog post today?" As much as I'd like your daily feed to be one which educates and informs and is related to nature, it's not always possible for me to find subject matter when the weather dictates staying inside. In fact, it's sometimes even difficult to find things to keep myself entertained, let alone my demanding (~cough~) readership. But desperation is often a good motivator, and at least insofar as keeping my hands employed, I've found a project. Not content with making a boring old granny-square afghan to use up tag ends of yarn, I decided to create my own "honeycomb" pattern.

Bees are masters of architecture. The six-sided cells of a honeybee's comb make efficient use of space even while providing structural integrity many other shapes lack. Geometrically speaking, the honeycomb pattern requires less material to create a lattice within a given space. A similar structure occurs when soap bubbles intersect, if not as uniformly laid out. Drawing on our precious pollinators' lesson in efficiency, it took me half an hour to develop a pattern I liked. Maybe I was inspired by my grandmother's repetition of Isaac Watts' poem during my childhood:

How doth the little busy bee   
  Improve each shining hour,   
And gather honey all the day   
  From every opening flower.   

How skilfully she builds her cell;           
  How neat she spreads her wax,   
And labors hard to store it well   
  With the sweet food she makes.   

In works of labor or of skill,   
  I would be busy too;           
For Satan finds some mischief still   
  For idle hands to do.   

In books, or work, or healthful play,   
  Let my first years be passed;   
That I may give for every day           
  Some good account at last.