Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
The idea that they were used for knitting fingers for woollen gloves seems the most plausible to me.
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I asked my sister, who knits. She thought it might be possible to use one of these objects for making gloves, using the corner knobs in a manner similar to "finger knitting" (which is a technique that uses no tools, just fingers). But if the size of the faces were used to set the size of the item -- which wouldn't vary with a single dodecaderon), then she had no idea why you'd want holes of different sizes, other than making pom-poms. And a flat face would do just as well for the actual knitting. Why not just a wooden board with pegs?
The only evident reason for having a dodecahedron if it those graduated hole sizes were actually the main feature, not the knobs around the pentagons, and it was at least cute or amusing to collect a set of twelve in that fashion.
Also, she mentioned that she'd seen Viking knitting needles essentially identical to the modern ones she uses. So, it's still not obvious why you'd want an expensive thing for a knitting job.
I didn't see any remotely similar knitting tools in a web search, so if they had a purpose for knitting, it was abandoned in favor of some other method. Maybe some low-tech dead end?