Questions about this pattern? 
Email mrwright at math dot uchicago dot edu!



ch 8. Join with first ch with ss to form a loop.
Work 4 sc in loop. Twist the loop into a figure-8.

Note that there are two ways of twisting it here. You're going to be
"jumping over" a strand on the next stitch, so you want to twist it
so that the part of the loop where you'd make the next stitch goes
*under*.

Work 4 sc in other loop. Now *sc 2 in next sc* four times. sc 2 in
next sc, "jumping over" the other stitches for the first of the two,
and *sc 2 in next sc* three times.

**sc2 in next sc, jumping for the first. *sc in sc, sc 2 in sc* three
times, and sc in next sc** twice.

At this point, what you have should look like two discs, intersecting
at a line. Continue to work along the one edge as before, "jumping" as
you go from one disc to the other, and doubling five or six of the
stitches on each row of each disc so they stay flat.

You can then stuff it and stitch the two discs together --- though,
really, I think it's much neater when it's left open.



If you prefer to knit, roughly the same idea works; once again the
tricky part is starting. I find it easiest to cast on to six
double-pointed needles (so you're working with seven in total),
arranged as two triangles meeting at a point (this point is where the
self-intersection occurs).