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Dave LeCompte (he/him)

@bigdicedave.bsky.social
32 followers 76 following 103 posts

Game Developer, 3d printerer, dancer, movie-goer, theater-goer, road tripper, loser of found things. bigdicedave.itch.io

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
A thread (ha!) about a knitting project. Back in October, I saw some people wearing hats that I clocked as frog-hats, green, with white discs on top with black spots in the center. Roughly similar to mickey mouse ear hats, but a different color scheme.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Made a #scarf on my #sentro #knittingmachine for Mom's birthday, in candy cane colors for the holidays. 230 rows, which turned out to be 44" in the finished scarf, a little short, but better than my previous scarf with 400 rows, something around 6 feet long.
Red and white knit scarf, using Red Lion "Super Saver" acrylic yarn. Alternating white bands of 30 rows and red bands of 20 rows.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Holiday "Santa" hats, knitted on #sentro #knittingmachine #circularknittingmachine Using Wool-Ease yarn, which is maybe my new favorite, it has the feel of wool, a nice wooly texture and mottled appearance.
"Santa Hat" in "Cranberry" and "Wheat" Wool-Ease yarn. I wanted to make this in time for the holidays. The total hat is 180 rows, with 20 rows for the brim in the "wheat" colored yarn. 20 rows is about two inches, and I didn't plan it out well, so the inside of the hat is the cranberry red color, which is visible at the bottom of the brim.

Still, a mostly satisfying Santa hat for the season.Red and green Santa hats. Maybe the green hat is for Mrs Claus? Or for one of the elves?

The green hat has a more generous cream brim, contrast with the red hat which has a narrower brim, showing the red showing through at the bottom."Santa Hat" in "Wheat" and "Forest Green Heather" Wool-Ease yarn. The hat overall was 180 rows, with the outside being 75 rows of the green yarn, then the brim a generous 45 rows, finishing with a final 60 rows of green for the interior (that adds to 180, right?)

This provides plenty of opportunity to turn the brim up for an inch and a half to two inches without showing the interior of the hat at the bottom of the brim.

The hat is pleasantly warm, the length feels appropriate for a holiday Santa hat. I like it.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Another hat experiment, a gift for my sister (don't tell her). I wanted to buy some nice yarn at a local yarn place, and I think I misread the yarn weight on the shelf - normally, I buy worsted, weight 4, and I think this might be weight 1 - I don't know a lot about yarn, but that seems significant.
blue and white knit cap, made on a Sentro circular knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I had a long holiday weekend, which I filled by visiting two yarn shops and making two hats.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
When I set out to make my most recent scarf, I weighed the yarn I had purchased, did some math, made a design (of sorts) that I expected to approximately use all my yarn. The scarf ended up being 400 rows, 6 feet long, which is a little ridiculous, but it didn't use all the yarn I planned to use.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Using the #sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine to make a scarf today - I had purchased 4 skeins of some nice wool yarn last spring, but I had avoided making this scarf for several months - in part due to season, in part due to not being satisfied with my skill to finish the ends.
knit scarf in blue and gray wool yarn, with a yardstick adjacent, showing that the scarf is approximately 6 feet in length.wool scarf with alternating bands of blue and gray wool yarn. Bands are made out of this row count:

blue 25
gray 50
blue 75
gray 100
blue 75
gray 50
blue 25
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Continuing to get the (literal, figurative) dust off the hat-knitting pipeline. I was having difficulty with the Sentro knitting machine feeling "tight", and producing what I believe are called "tucked" stitches. I wasn't sure if this was a result of gunk accumulating inside. [thread]
Work in progress picture looking down at a Sentro 48-needle knitting machine with two colors of green yarn, and claw weights.Finished knit green hat, with light green for the cap, darker green for the brimHat with googly eyes placed on top for inspiration - the eyes are not fastened to the hat (yet?), considering other eye-options for this project.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Today's knitting adventure - I disassembled, cleaned, lubed, and reassembled my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine and proceeded to attempt another experimental green hat (see previous post). This hat has 150 rows, which feels maybe a little longer than I was shooting for.
Knit hat in lime green yarn, knit on a circular knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
New hat for November 2025 - reacquainting myself with my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine, reminding myself the procedures for making a hat, remembering how many rows goes into a comfortable hat.
A knit hat in a lime green color, knit on a 48-needle Sentro circular knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Flow Field Half-Hexagon Quads Still, largely experimenting with pen swaps and flow fields. #iDraw #penplotter #flowfield #proceduralart
a hexagon comprising 8 smaller half-hexagon quadrilaterals, in red, blue, and black ink. The quads are filled with flow fields, which look to me a little like wood grain. The red pieces are the smoothest, followed maybe by the blue, then by the black. I find it interesting that I can't tell for certain whether blue is wigglier than the black or vice versa.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Flow Field Chessboard I took my flow field code and generated two flow fields - one mostly horizontal, one mostly vertical, then clipped the resulting paths into individual squares. I collected the squares into two SVGs, plotted them with different pens #idraw #flowfield #procedural #penplotter
pen plotter drawing with flow fields alternately red-vertical and black-horizontal, forming a chessboard. The finished drawing is 8 inches square, each square being an inch on a side.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
"Squared Circles" for 9/16/25 September 16 2025 was a "Pythagorean date", each element a square, the 2-digit year being the sum of the other two numbers. I nested a sequence of 4, 9, 16, 25 circles inside a square. #idraw #penplotter #circles #pythagoras #procedural
pen plotter drawing of concentric circles, made up of 25, 16, 9, 4, and 1 "beads". The finished work has a vaguely astrological feel."circle fractal" of circles filling the space in the corner between the ring of 25 circles and the square. I started with the shapes of the left side and bottom side of the drawing, along with the outer circle, then found a circle tangent to all three shapes, which gave me three new roughly triangular regions which I could recursively fill. I proceeded until the circles had got down to 1/20 of an inch.the beginnings of the ring of 25 beads being drawn
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
New Flow Field variation on a theme - constrained the flow field to a circle, constrained the vectors in the field between -35 and 75 degrees, for a more "river" flow visual. #iDraw #penplotter #generativeart #proceduralart #flowfield
"River" flow field, drawn in blue gel pen, flow lines are largely coherent, mostly going from top left to bottom right of the image.Beginning of drawing the flow field, individual strands are being drawn, some spatial coherence is visible.Nearly finished drawing, a few gaps are visibleonly a few gaps remain, resembling onion skin
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Flow Field drawing Flow field, where the direction of the flow comes from simplex noise. Plotted using blue EnerGel gel pen with an iDraw H SE plotter. #iDraw #PenPlotter #ProceduralArt #GenerativeArt
Completed drawing, with space-filling curved blue lines following a "flow field", generated from simplex noiseFlow field drawing in process - the early drawing has some "tendrils" reaching out to the edge of the draw area, but most of the detail is within a circle - this is a result of the algorithm that generated the "seeds" that lead to the paths, which starts at a point and spirals out.Beginning of the drawing - some long tendrils are visible and many arching short paths connecting some of the tendrils, resembling contour lines from a mountainous region
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
A poster for "Math Jam", a get together of recreational math folks mathsjam.com using Hershey fonts, bridson blue noise, and line segment SDFs. #iDraw #penplotter #math #mathjam #mathsjam
A poster with the words MATH JAM in large letters, and small numbers and letters filling the rest of the poster, drawn in blue ink.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
#iDraw #penplotter #proceduralart an exercise in clipping shapes (circles) against other shapes (circles, half-planes) specified as SDFs. Reminds me a little of a guitar or a fried egg.
a pen plotter drawing of a rectangle around a hexagon around a bunch of small circles, around a pair of medium sized circles, filled with a set of parallel lines. There's some extraneous lines in the upper right hand side that I need to sort out, I think my plotting bed is not quite level.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Drawing an Apollonian Gasket with a circle inversion on an UUNA Tek iDraw H A3 pen plotter #penplotter
apollonian gasket of 13 circles inside a larger circleclose up of recursive tangent circle chainscircle inversion of the outer gasket
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Has this happened to you? You have a less-than-perfect experience at a local business (e.g. a movie theater), you go to their website to inform them of what was less than ideal, provide a few suggestions of how to make it better next time, avoid the bad experience.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Three color beanie in white, light green, dark green, on my Sentro 48-hook circular knitting machine. I've been having fun (literally) cranking out hats on this machine, but now and then, I'll get a yarn (or a particular skein) that feels tight on the machine. #sentro #knittingmachine
knit hat, in white, light green, dark green. The bottom of the hat has dropped stitches and some of my most uneven work, inspiring me to try again.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
My current health care provider (in the US) provides "virtual" (i.e. Zoom) visits with my PCP, which is good. However, it seems like everything routes through one of the worst websites, I've had difficulty logging in, re-verifying my insurance coverage, my history of care has disappeared.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
More #sentro #circularknittingmachine hats - using yarn I bought at Bayshore Yarns in Silverdale, WA. www.facebook.com/profile.php?...
black/white/gray hat, with black and white pom pomgreen/blue hat, on Sentr 48 pin circular knitting machinegreen/blue hat with blue and turquoise pom pom on Sentro knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
"One for them, one for me" - I made a hat for my sister (shh, don't tell her, it's in the mail even now) using a speckly gray yarn and a turquoise blue yarn. I also made a black/white/gray hat for myself. I intend to add a pom pom to the top of my hat.
Blue body hat with heather gray brim on the left, with black and white speckled hat on the right, resting on Sentro 48 circular knitting machineheather gray body hat with turquoise blue brim on the left, with black and white speckled hat on the right, resting on Sentro 48 circular knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Latest #sentro #circularknittingmachine #knittingmachine project - I made a yellow/orange/white hat as a late/very early Halloween project.
yellow/orange/white "candy corn" knit hat, just off the Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machineyellow/orange/white knit hat, with a white pom pom.

Red and white santa hat in background, for comparison
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
I don't normally look to NPR as my curator of interactive entertainment, but there's some stuff here I'll take a closer look at. www.npr.org/2024/07/16/g...
npr.org
The best games of 2024, picked by NPR's staff
NPR staff and contributors share their favorite video games of 2024 so far.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
my polyhedral puzzle printing project (that's a mouthful!) yielded these two guys. These are after Stewart Coffin designs www.johnrausch.com/PuzzlingWorl... Figures 101 and 107, respectively - the second and third stellation of the rhombic dodecahedron.
Two 3d printed geometric puzzles - one in orange, black, and white, the seconds stellation of the rhombic dodecahedron, the other in purple, black, and white, the third stellation. From designs by Stewart Coffin
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
New #sentro hat, reversible purple/pink or pink/purple
Knit hat in pink with a purple brimsame hat as before, with purple and a pink brim showing
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Third project on the #Sentro, a hat in blue and white variegated yarn. The yarn is a lighter weight than my previous projects, which didn't work as well as I had hoped, including getting quite tangled around 2/3 of the way through the project. I gave it to Mom, and she seemed to enjoy it.
Knit hat with stripes of white/blue/purple.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Holiday themed hat, knit on the #sentro 48. This was my second project, and it turned out quite well. If I make another one, I'd probably make the white brim stripe a little wider, but it turned out well.
knit hat in red and white yarn. In the background is a Sentro circular knitting machine.

Not in this image, a pom-pom, which I added later.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Another 3d printed polyhedral puzzle, taken from Figure 100 from Stewart T. Coffin's "The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections". I think Coffin shows this puzzle as a stepping stone to Figure 101, which is currently on the printer. #3dprinted #puzzle
polyhedral puzzle in white, with an orange and a black R2D2 model behind for scale
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Day 1 with my new #Sentro Circular #KnittingMachine. I made a hat. ~120 rows, a few dropped stitches here and there. Good enough results to make me encouraged to try again.
Machine Knit hat in red, green and white yarn, from a Sentro knitting machine
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
With all the Laws and Orders and CSIs and NCISes and for that matter Perry Masons, Matlocks, and Hawaii 5-0s, you'd think that we could train up a generator that would spit out cop shows on demand. A procedural procedural, if you will.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
programming languages I have liked: BASIC (Applesoft/Apple II Integer) GraForth Pascal Scheme / LISP C (K&R) Python Rust And I'll just mention emacs, which has been with me through most of that.
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Some computer games I have enjoyed: Miner 2049er (Apple II) Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set (Apple II) Star Blazer (Apple II) Autoduel (Apple II) Bard's Tale I+II (Apple II) Airheart (Apple IIgs) Tass Times in Tonetown (Apple IIgs) Tradewars 2000 (BBS) Wing Commander (PC) X-Wing (PC)
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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Just 3d printing some polyhedral puzzles
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