Because there isn't enough math in knitting as it is

Wednesday night I went by Ledger's Liquors and with Ed's help, I got my friend Morgan a bottle of Russell's Reserve Rye Whiskey for his birthday and picked up a little something for myself, a bottle of Wathen's Single-Barrel Kentucky Bourbon. Ed Ledger is a man who not only resembles a young Bill Clinton, but is one talented and knowledgable liquor picker. It was probably the influence of these fyne spirits that got me thinking about cellular automation knitting, which as far as I know is the brainchild of Debbie New.

Cellular automation is the mechanism by which a system self-replicates, i.e. every little part of something operates by it's own independent rules, but they all have the same rules, like growing crystals or bacterial colonies.

Way back in the dark ages (I'm talking 1997), there was the Knitlist. It was an email mailing list with something like 1500 people on it, which was substantial even back then. A lot of it is also archived on woolworks, and it was the center of knitting life on the Internet.

I had picked up a copy of Knitter's (remember when that magazine didn't suck?) and because I'm a geek I was fascinated by an article on cellular automation and how the principles could be applied to knitting. Of course, I didn't really get it (it's not a simple concept) so I posted my first and only email to the knitlist asking for help. I got an email from the actual Debbie New, who'd written the article. Over the course of several emails, she'd helped me get the concept down. I printed out all those emails and stuck them in my knitting notebook, knitted a couple of scarves in CA lace, and promptly forgot it. I still have the notes, in my knitting notebook, at the bottom back corner of my storage space. Blast!

But the Internet never forgets, and thanks to the knitting-and site:

"You start with a seed row. Imagine you are working with a dark yarn on a light background. You scatter your dark seeds across the bottom row. As you get to your second row, you look down at the seed row. Each dark seed will be able to touch three stitches in the new row. The color of the stitches in the new row is determined by the location of the seeds. If a new stitch will be touching exactly one seed, either by being directly above or to the upper right or left of the seed, then you knit that stitch with the dark yarn.

new row      xxx  x  x

seed          x    xx

..."

Translating this to lace, which is a two stitch (YO, K2TOG) combo, looks a little something like this:

Row5   O/O/    O/O/ O/  O/  O/

Row4    O/      O/ O/    O/O/

Row3     O/O/O/O/ O/      O/

Row2      O/  O/   O/O/O/O/

Row1       O/O/     O/  O/

seed        O/       O/O/

What this means is when deciding how to work a new stitch, I'm looking at the stitch below to the left, directly below, and below to the right. If the stitch directly below is not a YO, but the one below and to the left or below and to the right is, I (YO, K2TOG). If they're both YOs, I knit a regular stitch. If I have to to do a K2TOG where there should be a YO, the K2TOG always takes precedence. The resulting pattern is sort of an organic triangular pattern that reminds me of snakeskin.

I love this, because the results are unpredictable and the rule is easy to remember. Total surprise lace. I'm going to knit my next spindle shawl in this and see how it turns out.