In this busy time of year, I've had a tough time attending to the blog. I get the feeling that the first part of this semester will be a bit crazy as well. So that is warning in advance. This pattern comes from a simple loop of six heptagons that are unwound by six hexagon-square pairs. As a visual explanation of this process, the picture below shows a rule that is applied to a pattern. The rule is placed the box; it shows a pair of red heptagons being replaced by a pair of heptagons with an orange square and an olive hexagon being inserted between the pair. When this rule is applied to the six instances of heptagons pairs in the adjacent loop of heptagons, the pattern on the right of the picture results. I call this process unwinding because of the angles introduced by the hexagons makes the loop go in the opposite direction. For another example of this, see July 10th's pattern.
To create the original pattern, a number of resulting unwound loop is connected in a checker board fashion and the opposite square are slightly elaborated with squares and heptagons.
