{"id":7856,"date":"2015-10-03T10:28:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-03T00:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2015-10-03T10:28:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T00:28:29","slug":"knitting-crochet-and-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2015\/10\/03\/knitting-crochet-and-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"Knitting, crochet and coding"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"From<\/a>

From https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/katemonkey\/5665916936. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

My husband went to a library conference this week, and as part of that, he visited The Edge<\/a> (part of the State Library of Queensland). He and fellow conference participants had a tour of the facility, which he found really inspiring.<\/p>\n

He’s just told me about the guy who was leading their tour saying something about teaching people crochet as a way into learning computer programming. This fellow said that there are similarities between crochet patterns and computer code.<\/p>\n

So off I went to look into this, being a maths\/science-y sort of brain, myself, and as I am currently knitting a pair of socks! (The Gymnast has also been exploring computer coding this year in her spare time.)<\/p>\n

I found articles and blog posts relating to both knitting and crochet, and computer coding.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.generativeart.com\/on\/cic\/papersGA2008\/4.pdf<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.codecademy.com\/blog\/70-how-knitters-are-human-computers<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.mcdaniel.edu\/information\/headlines\/news-at-mcdaniel\/archive\/math-professors-express-complex-concepts-through-crochet<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/geekfeminism.org\/2012\/03\/21\/are-all-female-programmers-also-knitters\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Of particular interest to me was one of the comments on the “Geekfeminism” blog, from someone called “Slashy”:<\/p>\n

I am a knitter, crochet-er, gardener, home brewer of alcoholic beverages and a web programmer. It is very evident to me that what gets me excited in my professional and hobby life is a specific flavour of making things that involves patience, repetition, iterative improvement and many small losses and victories on the path to a final product. I am not one for building big things- I\u2019ve tried bike repair, furniture construction and so forth and just can\u2019t get into larger pieces\/bigger risks\/bigger pay-offs style. Even when I succeed I find the pay-off unsatisfying. I\u2019m into the process.<\/p>\n

I LOVE lace knitting & crochet for their beautiful maths, and for the way that I-the-knitter build a relationship through my project with this algorithm presented to me by the pattern-writer, and this relationship is built on trust, suspense and revelation. I literally gasp out loud with delight and excitement as each successive row reveals to me what the trickery on the previous row was for. I find it SO EXCITING that I try to rave about it to my friends in bars (spoiler: nobody else thinks this is exciting).<\/p>\n

Obviously I need to find more knitter-programmer friends to hang out with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought that sounded just like me when I get excited about an embroidery stitch… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Is this something you can relate to? I think a lot of people who like Hardanger are mathematics type people. There’s counting, order, precision and pattern involved. Are you someone who has\/has had a career in maths\/science fields who loves creating? Does your creativity reflect your love of maths\/science, particularly in the creative process itself, rather than the imagery of your creativity?<\/p>\n

If you’re a school teacher, have you heard of this idea of using crochet and knitting as a way into computer coding? I’m wondering if I need to teach The Gymnast to crochet. She already loves loom bands, which use a hook, so I think she could take to it quite well. And you don’t get dropped stitches with crochet in the same way that you can in knitting! We have a whole long weekend ahead of us, before the new school term resumes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/katemonkey\/5665916936. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 licence.<\/p>\n

My husband went to a library conference this week, and as part of that, he visited The Edge (part of the State Library of Queensland). He and fellow conference participants had a tour of the facility, which he found really inspiring.<\/p>\n

He’s just told me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embroidery-musings","category-making-stuff","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7862,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions\/7862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}