Pushing String

In keeping with its pragmatic approach to identity, the New Zealand State Services Commission is making its identity services friendlier and more responsive to people’s real needs. Part of this is a rebranding effort around “igovt”. Good stuff!

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Colin Wallis, Bill Young, and Danny Mollan of the SSC on various efforts, such as the recent Project Concordia workshop activity. I’m really looking forward to the identity conference in Wellington, NZ next week — not only ’cause I get to experience the locale (though who could resist that??) but also because I’ll get to meet up with these folks and meet many others I know only as disembodied voices or by reputation.

The only potential downside: I heard today that I might not be able to carry knitting needles onto the plane. I can’t seem to verify that with an online source; it looks like they’re allowed. If anyone can confirm or deny, let me know! I should probably take heed of this Plan-B advice…

[UPDATE: Arrgh. Right on my itinerary it says “In the interest of security and safety we would like to advise customers that sharp items and cutting implements of all types and sizes such as pocket knives, scissors, nail files, corkscrews, letter openers, knitting needles, realistic toy imitation weapons, razor blades etc, must be carried in checked luggage only.”]

Lauren gives her take on our fiberrific outing (or would that be “fibriffic” spelled her way?). I guess I needn’t have been so coy about the identities of “my very experienced and talented knitting friends”, and as it happens, she and Yvonne are also my very knowledgeable and talented colleagues. Lauren has a great crafting blog; I hope Yvonne considers blogging her crafting adventures as well.

Lauren notes that the tech quotient of the actual event was low, but we suspected there were plenty of techie-types in attendance. As we went around the room doing introductions in my Charting class, I mentioned that I had designed some XML-related cross-stitch charts; one young woman piped up: “You mean like web services?” Yowza.

One more language note: I learned a great acronym from the Creative Crochet Lace book. It’s common to yield to temptation repeatedly and buy lots of yarn for what is called one’s “stash”. Eventually you run the risk of a terrible condition called SABLE: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. This is an addiction, folks — clearly we should be taking it much more seriously. Time to start a .org!

Test scrumbles

So I survived the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, and had a wonderful time learning and hanging out with friends. Both brain and fingers have gotten a real workout. This event is somewhat like a convention or technical conference of the sort I’m used to, but with an overtly social purpose, and attendees sign up for specific classes, rather than floating from track to track at will.

The language of knitting and crocheting has really gotten under my skin. I took Creative Crochet Lace with Myra Wood, and found that the class — along with the companion book — was filled with delicious words and phrases. For starters, there’s scrumble, a piece of lace created in a freeform fashion (when you stitch these pieces you’re scrumbling). Makes me want to crochet up a fruit-themed work just so I can call it an “apple scrumble”. (Hmm, plenty of Google hits for this one referring to recipes, though it does ask the fateful question “Did you mean apple crumble?”) The book casually invokes the phrase fiber jazz to describe a particular style of freeform lace. Lovely.

The past tense of knit became something of an irritant to me every time I heard it in the “Market” (what I would have called the huckster room had I been at an SF con…). If knitting isn’t a pastime of yours, I bet you’d say it should be knitted. I guess I’m revealing my newbie status in agreeing with you. But it turns out the past tense all the cool knitters use is knit, as in “I knit four sweaters and three hats last year.” I found a source that defends the irregularity of this verb and in the process earned myself a whack across the knuckles: I do use the American English past tense of fit, which is of course fit. Then again, I also say “day-tah” for data but “statt-us” for status, so sue me.

In another class on charting written patterns (and conversely writing out charted patterns) with Karen Alfke, I learned sweater-knitting tricks that I probably won’t be ready to try out for a year or so — haven’t made my bones on sweaters yet. She has an honest-to-goodness methodology (with paper-form tools!) for the multitasking involved in knitting a main pattern with (say) cables running up it, an armhole decrease, and a neckline decrease so that it all lines up properly at the top. One way she put it was that you’re fileting the pattern. Nice. (The term filet also shows up in the context of a totally different crochet technique, lest you get confused.)

With the help of my very experienced and talented knitting friends, I’m planning to tackle a lace shawl soon. Next lessons up: new stitches, circular needles, and teeny weeny yarn…

A little while back I did a podcast with Daniel Raskin on federated identity standards for Sun’s IdM Buzz blog. IdM Buzz is a font of useful information, and I encourage you to check it out, but I have to admit I delayed posting this podcast link because the filename they assigned it made my face turn red. :-)

Even though I was running on fumes when we did the recording (I give a hint as to why in the final minute or two…), I think we managed to put together some good, easily digestible information about standards that complements the new Government Computer News SAML cover story pretty well. If you found me here at Pushing String by reading that article and hunting for more info, I definitely recommend the podcast to you.

And now, here’s my chance to attempt the blog equivalent of a triple gainer: In the podcast I talk a tiny bit about my band. Recently we headed into the studio to record a demo CD (a blast and a half, and something that helped out a good cause). And what did I do while hanging out in the control room between takes? Domino knitting. Oh, yeah.

Fearless leader John in the studio’s control room (see related Flickr set here)

Neato — a QRCode pillow that talks about itself. (H/t JeffH.)

It’s been a little quiet around here — I haven’t pushed much virtual string lately. Business travel, vacations, holidays, laptop-switching, and various other home IT projects have kept me busy. I’ll try to make it up to all (three) of you in 2008. But I had to post here at least once more in 2007, to mark my third blogiversary.

I have managed to do some literal string-pushing in recent weeks, learning a technique called modular knitting. Ooh, I thought, modular?! — that’s cool. It turns out that one of its alternate names, domino knitting (as popularized by Vivian Høxbro), is a little closer to the truth because you knit small mitered squares and then immediately form new ones on the edges of old ones as you go. So it’s not modular in the sense of knitting a pile of granny-square-like objects and then arranging and joining them however you wish; everything is the same size and adheres to a “contract” specifying well-known interfaces but gets locked into its predestined role pretty quickly. That’s when I started thinking of it as SOA-enabled. (I crack me up.)

I’m still a knitting newbie. I’ve managed to master the knitted cast-on bit and the double-decrease bit and and the picking-up-stitches bit, but knitting over yarn tails and carrying multiple colors continue to elude me, which limits my options. I need to get the advice of experts who are sitting right there with me — and luckily, I’ll have many such chances at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

In trying to learn more about modular knitting, I stumbled on this account by the Girl from Auntie of its origins, which explains that — gasp — a woman named Virginia Woods Bellamy patented the basic technique under the name number knitting (U.S. Patent No. 2,435,068). The GfA’s explanation of how this patent might have come to be granted applies just as much to the expansive software patent world (and is equally unsatisfying as an explanation). What’s really crazy is the long list of patents that cite this one. I couldn’t find any discussion of patent licensing terms that might have been offered by Bellamy while it was still in force, and can only hope she didn’t sic any lawyers on any knitters.

The GfA seems to be an accomplished knitter and writer, most of whose writings don’t seem to be online anymore — a shame. She apparently used to offer an essay on copyright for knitters, which along with her knitting patent thoughts would have made a great addition to Lauren’s commentary on the subject, but it doesn’t seem to be available now. I did poke around a bit and found this hilarious pattern of hers, which starts out with:

AGREEMENT RELATING TO A RAGLAN PULLOVER

This RAGLAN PULLOVER KNITTING PATTERN dated this 22nd day of December, 2006 (hereinafter referred to as the “Pattern”) being designed by the girl from auntie (the “Designer”) and entered into by you, an individual knitter (the “Knitter”).

RECITALS

WHEREAS Knitter is currently in possession of, or intends to acquire, approximately eight hundred (800) yards of bulky weight yarn;
…

Now that’s a knitting contract. Happy new year, all!

Given the odd tech-and-stitching grooves I get into here, however did I miss this 1998 article??

XML is a simplified dialect of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). For those of you unfamiliar with SGML, it is an international standard (ISO-8879) for defining descriptions of the structure and content of documents in an electronic form. XML simplifies SGML by capturing about 80 percent of SGML’s functionality with only 20 percent of the complexity.

HTML, which is a description of the structure and content of a single type of document called a “Web page,” is just one instance of what can be created with SGML. In other words, if HTML is a single knit sweater, SGML and XML are how-to books on knitting. By learning XML, you can create sweaters, socks, leg warmers, or any kind of knitted apparel you want!

Not bad, though it misses the opportunity to capture the generative power of a single XML vocabulary. If instance:web page:sweater and model:HTML:sweater knitting pattern, then metamodel:XML:this. (Ooh, and maybe model building tool:XML schema IDE:this.)

That’s “unfinished object” and “finished object”; I’ve been learning all that street talk by cruising the knitting pr0n sites. I’ve finished implementing a proof-of-concept that demonstrates I can turn cotton yarn into a useful tea-towelish piece of fabric using two pointy sticks. See?

Lauren not only caught me in the act of working on it at the Kings Arms near Wadham College, she’s the one who designed the cool basketweave pattern for me and helped me debug it along the way. She is a true expert and knits things like, oh, whole sweaters that actually fit and look attractive, sporting this item while in Oxford.

I had no idea knitting would be so mesmerizing and absorbing, even more so than crochet. Now I really have to figure out a second doable project so I can get my fix — bookmark? hanger cover? motorcycle?

Jeni Tennison went and infected me with a notion today in her post mentioning the Ian Knot — a more efficient way of tying one’s shoelaces. (I guess I still have the capacity to be amazed by the Interweb…a whole site about shoelaces?!?) I couldn’t resist poking around Ian’s Shoelace Site, shoe in hand, practicing the Ian Knot and also debugging the bows I’ve been tying my whole life. Yes, it’s true, I’m a Granny Knot tier and I didn’t even know how horribly inefficient it was. But there’s time to change my ways.

In the same spirit of picking up new life skills, Jeni’s new one around knot-tying reminded me, very closely in fact, of one I picked up recently myself: knitting. I finally taught myself how a few weeks ago by using my newly acquired Stitch ‘n’ Bitch book (I reviewed the crocheting book by the same author here) and a great site called KnittingHelp.com.

As an aside, I remember when the computer documentation crowd dutifully defined all its SGML DTDs to have video elements in them because we were sure that, someday, documentation would actually have videos in it. It sure wasn’t happening much in 1991, or 1995. I’m glad it finally came to pass.

While crocheting gives you one nice, easy hook for pulling one loop through another, making the tricky “live” area localized, knitting gives you two pointy sticks and a whole row of live stitches at once. Yikes. Luckily, knitting has some benefits over crocheting that made it worth trying, such as that it uses a lot less yarn, and results in a less bulky/dorky fabric. (Most crocheted sweaters shouldn’t have been.) Once I got over my abject fear, I went through much the same process to try out the stitches as I just did tonight with the Ian Knot and a proper Square Knot with Ripcords.

What I’ve learned is that there are actually multiple ways to make “knitting knots”, which is kind of what knitting and purling are (or are they more like lacing?), and you might choose different ones depending on what feels right to you. Everyone knows about the English style of knitting and purling, where you feed out the yarn from your right hand, and the Continental style, where you feed it out from your left hand. But I hadn’t heard of Norwegian purling before — and it supposedly produces the same result as regular purling.

All this led me to wonder if anyone had figured out some kind of formal “knitting knot theory”, which would be helpful in working out all the different possible variations. I didn’t find any evidence of such a thing, though the Home of Mathematical Knitting has a pretty good roundup of links of the “I knitted a mathematical model” variety, and mentions someone named Amanda Redlich whose work may be related.

With a long plane trip coming up, I’m going to keep practicing the knitting thing, and will try to incorporate the Ian Knot into my life too. If anyone has managed to unify it all, let me know.

Bruce Sterling snarks a bit (at least, I think that’s snark — “How entirely 2007 of them”?) about BurdaStyle, which wants to be “an open-source hub of ideas, expertise, and amazing patterns” — sewing patterns, that is, not software design patterns.

It certainly does seem that craft patterns are yet another kind of information that wants to be free. By their nature, patterns are an open book; they have to tell you exactly how to make something, or they’re no good. In that sense, their algorithms are “open-source” already, if not necessarily free or available for anyone to enhance. And scanning and high-quality electronic copying are pretty much zero-cost at the margin, which presents a problem for commercial print publishers of patterns, copyright laws notwithstanding. You can even reverse-engineer some designs fairly handily. What will be the business model going forward for designers of sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc. patterns? Perhaps it will look more and more like the newer business models for software.

There’s already vertical integration (selling kits that include everything you need, such as those offered by the not-safe-for-work Subversive Cross Stitch), which tends to be attractive to beginners. There’s custom services (like designs for special-purpose stitched alphabets or incorporating a loved one’s name into a pattern; here’s a lovely example). And now maybe there’s, um, middleware — or should that be “middlewear”? — for end-product developers (BurdaStyle says it’s “the first established pattern publisher to release its designs under a creative commons license, allowing members of the public to market their BurdaStyle creations in limited editions”).

And of course there’s building a community (BurdaStyle has begun a “Sewpedia” which people will be able to contribute to) as a potential audience for advertising. I suppose there’s even DRM, sigh (a designer once supplied a read-only electronic file for a pattern I bought, but I think it was just because I only had the free “reader” version of the stitch design program).

Of course, often you only get what you pay for. Nth-generation photocopied patterns are hard to work with, and even the simplest of free patterns whipped up by nonprofessionals have sometimes led me badly astray. I gladly pay for excellent patterns that meet my use cases, and I do adhere to the designers’ wishes around copying. I wonder if voluntary payment is a model that could work for some. Perhaps community contributions to a pattern’s “reputation” (quality of instructions, accuracy of time and difficulty estimates, beauty of the finished work) could be factors in determining a price or suggested donation.

It appears that pattern delivery channels, at least, are getting more sophisticated. In poking around tonight, I found this Makezine article from last September about its sewing instructions (audio, video, and PDF) being delivered over iTunes. This really makes me wonder why the cryptic notation for knitting and crocheting sticks around; most applications don’t need such strong compression anymore!

And relatedly, I just came upon the Open Source Embroidery project, which invokes Ada Lovelace in:

…bring[ing] together programming for embroidery and computing. It’s based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product.

If you’re interested in exploring the similarities between tech and craft, by all means do check out this one.

And now, I do believe I’m sufficiently fired up for the Stitch ‘n’ Bitch session I’m hosting on Friday.

(Thanks to Gunnar Peterson for the tip.)