Dr. Eli
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skeindeer.bsky.social
Dr. Eli
@skeindeer.bsky.social
720 followers 72 following 11 posts
Skeindeer Knits. Knitting pattern designer. I may or may not start posting here. Your guess is as good as mine. Follow me to find out? 🧶
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skeindeer.bsky.social
But what has knitters sounding off in the comments are the descriptions of knitting as "more of an art than science", "intuition", "trial and error", and "like programming" (rather than the other way around).

I'll include some of my favourite comments.
@twiggyvlogs6441 Trial and error kind of is the foundation of science, we have a hypothesis, we test it, we work with it and we build on what we learnt. That's what knitters have been doing this whole time. I love the increased visibility of knitting, I've been involved with some people researching it's applications in the architecture world which is really fantastic. Its important to be careful with the tone of reporting around this. It can sometimes get very 'some old ladies were messing with string in a cave and then the physicists came and made the knitting into something proper!'. There is a high level of technical understanding in crafting culture. When we minimise this we do both groups a disservice. Knitters have often been women and often been from backgrounds where they didn't have access to good formal education. This doesn't mean they were stupid or unable to understand what they were doing. We need to credit them but also, we need to involve knitters in the research and lots of them. If we don't engage with the crafts people we are leaving such a lot of amazing knowledge on the table. @outfitmadeofawesome I take a bit of issue with referring to the development of knitting as "trial and error". I am both a knitter and a (former) analytic philosopher, and I don't think this characterization is really fair to the history of knitting. Nor is it really consistent with the way we talk about other fields. I understand the point you're making here: we lacked a mechanistic explanation for the behaviour of knitted materials until relatively recently. However, absence of a mechanistic understanding does not imply that all knitting patterns were developed through "trial and error", at least not as it this phrase is typically used. For instance, we do not currently have a complete mechanistic explanation for the pain-killing properties of acetaminophen. Nevertheless, we understand very well what acetaminophen *does*. When a pharmacist tells you to take an acetaminophen for your headache, she isn't just guessing or trying something out. We know very very much indeed about the effects and side-effects of acetaminophen, which we learned through observation, reflection, and inference from our observations. That's the skeleton of the scientific method. Knitting patterns were developed in the same way. A knitter may not have understood the physics of a knit stitch or a yarn-over, but they understood very well what those action *did*. Designers were able to create complex patterns through inference from their previous observations. Knitting is no more an "art developed through trial and error" than engineering is. You do not need a complete mechanistic explanation of the functionality of the universe in order to do science. Lacking an understanding of the physics of a purl stitch doesn't mean that knitwear designers weren't doing something scientific. They didn't develop punch cards through trial and error, nor lacework, nor cables. This was through observation, reflection, and inference. @NeptuneTart "Perhaps knitting doesn't fill you to the brim with excitement--" SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, GREEN. @michaelajohn189 1:33 Actually, programming is a little like knitting! Charles Babbage’s 1837 Analytical Engine, widely considered to be the first computer, was designed to use punch cards. Computers from the 1950s to 1970s famously continued to rely on punch cards to represent their 1/0 binary states. Why? It was actually inspired by an earlier invention, the Jacquard machine. The Jacquard machine, invented in 1804, was a device that could be attached to weaving (and later knitting) machine looms to enable automatic patterning in a binary system. In weaving, the horizontal weft thread can either go above or below the warp threads, and different patterns of above or below will create fabrics with different qualities. In knitting, you can either switch colors, or do either a knit or purl stitch. Humans can do that on their own, but automation makes it much faster. The Jacquard machine used punch cards to denote one state or the other, so you could design whatever binary-based pattern you wanted and have a machine weave or knit it for you. Charles Babbage took this concept and used it for his Analytical Engine design. Later, Ada Lovelace noted that using these punch cards, you could direct the Engine to do specific tasks— a feat that she is now recognized as the first computer programmer for. And both of those achievements owe themselves to innovations in textile production!
September 5, 2025 at 1:18 PM
skeindeer.bsky.social
I have discovered a new hobby - this only happens, like, once a decade!

I haven't been this sucked into something since I first discovered stranded colourwork knitting.
Progress on my embroidery project, stage 1. Progress on my embroidery project, stage 2. Progress on my embroidery project, stage 3. Progress on my embroidery project, stage 4.
March 18, 2025 at 8:59 AM
skeindeer.bsky.social
Don't get a mini schnauzer if you don't want this while you knit.🥰
Me knitting in my living room, while my mini schnauzer rests her head on my shoulder.
January 26, 2025 at 3:39 PM
skeindeer.bsky.social
Hiii! It's so nice to see you all here. That I'm not the only one who's fed up with Meta deciding what we do and don't see, and the political direction they're heading!

To new people: I make Scandi inspired knitting patterns with a modern twist✨ and I host a knitting podcast on YouTube, since 2016.
January 26, 2025 at 3:19 PM