KaitlinMS

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:

Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.

This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer. 

But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine. 

Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:

But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!

Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,

and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.

My co-worker Greg won a plushie commission while we were raising funds for charity and he chose Geno from Super Mario RPG. As someone who only played twenty minutes of Mario RPG on an emulator in high school - I never really grew attached to the figure, but thought it would be an interesting challenge to take something like this on!

I was having trouble with large holes in the armpit when I was picking up stitches for the sleeve. I managed to fix it for the most part by picking up extra stitches in strategic spots and then knitting them together.

The armpit is still a little sloppy, but maybe it’ll block out, and maybe no one will look at my armpits. 😬

I was having trouble with large holes in the armpit when I was picking up stitches for the sleeve. I managed to fix it for the most part by picking up extra stitches in strategic spots and then knitting them together.

The armpit is still a little sloppy, but maybe it’ll block out, and maybe no one will look at my armpits. 😬