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I don't understand how lace is made, but looking at the #bobbins and pins and patterns ... listen buddy I know math when I see it. This is A #Math Thing. Obviously.
Right away I want to know: Can I encode information in lace?
How much of an expert must one be to make your own patterns?
What about the creation of surfaces?
#Knitting is more accessible, and people have been exploring math with knitting forever.
But what possibilities does lace offer?
What is the theory of lace?
The little bits of fashion/ manufacturing history I've read make a big deal about the demise of hand-made lace. And I get it. You want to make a whole wedding dress of lace, the woman hours are outrageous.
But, even my untrained eye can tell the handmade from the machine: it's less compromised by uniformity. & for some reason it's softer.
The rise of the lace machines put many women out of work. lace was once a good gig for a young woman with nimble fingers & a desire for some independence.
@futurebird Look up quipu?
I don't think the strands of quipu are ever tied together ... are they?
Exactly, great questions.
Also that everything is binary fascinates me. Two kinds of stitches, basically. Front of needle, back of needle.
If you find a theory of lace, let us know!
You just look at the threads and think DNA and punchcards. Some complex multipair wrapped DNA strand with huge encoding and encyption possibilities.
I was just about to mention punchcards. It was the first thing that came to mind.
@len @futurebird Was that from the Neal Stephenson Baroque Trilogy?
@richard_merren @len @futurebird
That was a kind of cross-stich encoding binary, iirc. ie if topright-bottomleft was uppermost it meant one thing, if topleft -bottomright, it meant the other.
Delightful stuff!
@ACAElliott @len @futurebird Yes...thanks for the reminder! Loved those books.
@futurebird first picture looks like old time computer punch cards to me, which is also what drove the patterns on jacquard weaving machines back in the day.
@futurebird afaik machines still can't crochet
@futurebird
This is what I love about Mastodon. I admit I never stopped and thought about lace beyond marvelling that anyone could have the patience to do it. But your comment negates all the historical bs that somehow "girls are not good at math" or science. Or engineering. Yet another example of a male dominated society rationalizing its autocratic control and subjugation of its competition.
Plus women who DO break through like Caroline Herschel are viewed as exceptions, not examples.
@dbc3 @futurebird
I hired a lot of women engineers in my team and one if them was the best person that ever worked for me. My boss used to be a woman. Also the best Engineering boss I ever had. Anyone who says women can't do maths and science is talking nonsense.
@futurebird the early calculating machines were for textile factories, card punch machines are for looms and knitting rigs, making textiles into shapes correctly is topology
It's all one thing
@futurebird /me summons @akareilly who is constantly researching the history and connections between textiles and computers.
@jollyorc @futurebird The lace machines also run on punchcards. The Lace Museum in Brussels is a useful resource, and it happens to be where I fled after some ableist nonsense happened at FOSCON 2019.
@jollyorc @futurebird I only do drawn thread work and knitted lace myself, but since I’m very slowly writing a book, bobbin lace and chemical lace are on my research list.
Shetland knitted lace is composed of established motifs, so that would absolutely be a thing for encoding. Yarn over to make a hole, knitting two or three stitches together - these things can be “read” in a finished shawl.
@futurebird I love everything about this question.
I always thought similar about knitting and crochet. This is jommetry! For a traditionally female pursuit it sure involves a lot of traditionally not-female thinking... Perhaps we've been wrong about women all this time‽
Sarcasm aside, I'd like to subscribe to this newsletter.
@Altreus @futurebird Highly recommend checking out the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef! https://crochetcoralreef.org/
@futurebird I did a little bit of bobbin lace over 20 years ago. From what I remember there were 3 types of "stitches", unlike 2 for knitting, so you would be able to code terciary(? no idea if that's the right word), rather than binary.
Of course it was so long ago I may be wrong 
@futurebird not quite lace, quite, but there is more than one tale of women knitting codes during wartime.
IIRC neal stephenson has the lead female character (whose name i have forgotten) do that in The Baroque Cycle
@futurebird I wish @jer was on here more... this is a passion of his.
@futurebird Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle includes thoughts on information encoding in a couple of places.
@futurebird
Probably by Ada Lovelace!
in order:
yes!
not a lot - one of the things I did for a certificate was create my own pattern when I was about 11.
surfaces are trickier but there are people doing amazing things with 3D lace patterns. Generally it does need a starching agent or support structure.
as for the rest, I don't know because I dropped out of maths after GCSE (higher maths was optional and clashed with orchestra) but it sounds exciting.
@futurebird torchon lace is the easiest to replicate with machine lace, though I've seen some Bedfordshire as well. Once you get into Bucks Point and Honiton, it's near impossible to replicate with a machine, especially at scale.
Nottingham Industrial Museum still has a brilliant collection of lacemaking frames.
@futurebird It's not lace, but crochet is a legit way to visualize hyperbolic planes. (planes where parallel lines diverge.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_fiber_arts
Has some interesting examples, but the crocheted hyperbolic planes seems to be the only one using fiber arts to do math instead of the other way around.
@futurebird there would be a Muslim scholar in the early middle ages who would have developed such a theory, with geometric patterns etc
@futurebird I can't believe nobody has linked this video yet!
Crochet and math is a whole thing
@futurebird I’ve taken on just about any needecraft with ease. They come pretty naturally to me. But I’m convinced lace making must involve some witchcraft. That shit is mind blowing. Then again, I’m bad at math so maybe that’s why I don’t get it.
@futurebird It's a great question!
In the Liaden Universe book series, one of the characters (Theo Waitley) uses lace to visualize the complicated math needed to jump through space.
@ginguin @futurebird Ooh, which book? I've only found The Dragon Variation so far..
@futurebird you can follow @mem_somerville for lace-making expertise!
@ef4 @futurebird Oh, yes. Totally a math thing. And once you get in, you find a disproportionate number of science and computer science nerds have found their way in.
You must seek out Veronika Irvine.
https://fibreartsvancouver.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/interview-with-veronika-irvine-amazing-patterns/
@ef4 @futurebird This might also entertain you. I get sucked in all the time to this site....
@mem_somerville @futurebird you beat me to it 
…anyway, here is something that she has done.
https://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2017-bridges-conference/virvine
@futurebird I'm probably retreading the obvious but related concepts:
Jacquard Looms. The rendered weaving is an expression of the punched cards, and vice versa. And the latter lead directly to the Hollerith Card and digital data storage.
Tapestries are a form of data storage in textile form. Not digital data storage, but storage all the same. Similarly for rugs, needlepoint, etc.
Quipu as @dragfyre noted.
DNA and RNA are the OG knitted data storage.
I'd realised a ways back that for both data recording and data transmission what you want is a substrate or channel which is uniform but capable of variation. Schroedinger coined the term "aperiodic crystals", in the context of discovering the structure of DNA.
I've been wondering how a substance such as carbon nanotubes might be used as a storage medium, and you're bringing to mind that if a weave or helix of tubes could be made to carry either a pattern or cross-strands (as with DNA and RNA), that might work.
As for data-lace itself: not that I'm aware, but that's an inspired idea.
@futurebird Crazy question, but wondering if any mystery novels or real life where secret messages were encoded and transported by lace. An encrypted message in plain sight.
@amart @futurebird "The Lace Reader" by Brunonia Barry should have been that. Instead, #IpswichLace was just a prop. It totally could have gone that way, and a book definitely should....
@futurebird I would expect lace with information in it to look rather uneven.
But if you add sequins, they'll look neat even if they are uneven enough to communicate a message.
@futurebird Check out Sarah Spencer's knitting work https://heartofpluto.co (not sure if she's on here)
@futurebird Feynman would have loved this post
@futurebird I have no idea, but I'd love to know more!
From school memories, Bobbin lacemaking is something like weaving, but on a 45 degree angle, rather than 90 degrees.
I think it would be possible to encode something, but it would be very slow!
@futurebird it’s just math.
@futurebird Whenever some jackass claims women are "intrinsically" bad at (or not interested in) maths, I think of knitting, lace, weaving, basketmaking... all of which go waaayy beyond my mathematical intuition, and all of which were mostly female pursuits until they became cool and/or profitable. Hardly surprising that the same pattern shows up in the history of computer programming.
@futurebird I’m loving this.
Check out the talk titles in this session:
https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR19/Session/K63
The most general lace techniques (bobbin and _punto in aria_, which is embroidering freeform, making the “background” as you go) are beyond binary — you can have an arbitrary number of crossings at a point, a thread can freely change direction at any point (in 3D, though it’s a lot easier in nearly-2D!). Also you can have an arbitrary number of threads, though I think that’s possible to treat as one mathematically but works differently in physics/engineering.
Also, on encoding information in lace — people have been drawing representative pictures in it for hundreds of years. I found one with legible text, even:
https://www.trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/media/k2/items/cache/47d0564a2ed12ba5938a229d62866749_XL.jpg
But secret, steganographic encodings? Like, looking for two stitches/crossings that work the same in the lace but can be distinguished on close examination? That’s a fun question because it’s often neighboring knots that keep each other stable in the metamaterial.
@futurebird Not seeing that anyone mentioned Madame Defarge, one the tricoteuses in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Madame Defarge attends meetings during the French Revolution and encrypts the names of her enemies in her knitting.
@futurebird
I cannot answer your question, but I can give you a little anecdote. My mother used to make bobbin lace. She made enough for my wedding dress (which she also made).
She took me to one of the bobbin lace meetings once, and I met an old lady who had been making lace since childhood.
The woman seemed like she could run her hand over the bobbins and lace just magically came out. It was amazing. She said she had to learn to do it fast because it was her job as a young woman.
@futurebird
The amount of mathematics involved in "woman's work" is incredible. My mother also quilts, and people have encoded messages in quilting patterns for as long as quilting has existed.
But back to the question, I'm absolutely certain it would be possible to encode a lot into lace if you had the time and reason to do it.
@futurebird I encode words in knitted lace, and have done a bit of regular bobbin lace. I’m sure it must be possible; all fiber arts are math at heart.
@futurebird there are like a dozen different ways to make lace. The one with the bobbins and the pins is essentially an extremely complex braid.
I've resisted learning it so far.
@futurebird I can't find a link again now for you, but during the American Revolution, women spies would encode information in their knitting and lace-making that they hung on their clotheslines. No one suspected a thing, but yes, absolutely. It was done.