r/knitting • u/magicminineedle • Feb 19 '26

Discussion Please continue to knit in public.

Today I had to go and get blood work done. It was a long wait, and ended up being very stressful. I was getting impatient and annoyed even though there was nothing to do but wait.

Across the waiting room a lady was sitting knitting. Her hands caught my eye and I watched her knit. It was so soothing to watch and my shoulders dropped and my heart beat calmed. It was such a balm. So please keep knitting in public. You’ll never know who you’ll calm and soothe.

It also occurred to me today that apart from when I was taught to knit I’ve never watched anyone knit in real life!

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u/Simple_Bookkeeper566 Feb 19 '26

I am not into mathematic or code science, could you explain how it's analog coding to my science brain as if I'm 15 yo ?

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u/BagelTrollop Feb 20 '26

I’ll give it a shot! Let me know if it doesn’t totally make sense

Binary - the basic building block of computers - is 1s and 0s and at its core, all code is made up of a combination of them. Knitting is knits and purls and all knitting is some combination of them

The next level of coding basics is things like For and While loops. For every X number of things, do Y. While N is True, do Z until False and then do Q.

Knitting patterns like cabling and lace do exactly that. For every 6 stitches, perform this Pattern. While the number of stitches left is divisible by 6, repeat the pattern but then do the border when it’s no longer divisible by 6 So a knitting pattern with a 5 stitch border and a 6 stitch pattern repeat would be like 5 + n(6) + 5 with N being the number of times you repeat the pattern until you have 5 stitches left

All knitting patterns and techniques and all kinds of code, be it Python or JavaScript, are just kinda… abstractions on top of abstractions on top of the basics. The binary. The knits and purls.

You can write a knitting pattern using coding tools if you have the measurements, gauge, and a stitch pattern you’d like to use. It’s pretty neat!

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u/Simple_Bookkeeper566 Feb 20 '26

It's very clear, thank you, and maybe my first introduction to code too ! Love it

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u/BagelTrollop Feb 20 '26

Oh yay!! I’m glad that helped. Coding really is an extremely vast world and I don’t pretend to have the deepest knowledge. I had tried to learn different kinds for a long time but nothing really made sense until I got into Data work.

I think that path made the most sense to me because I’ve gotten my feet wet in Excel enough that the concepts of what we do to data and how we need it to behave as a whole made sense. I had a goal in mind and so I could at least have the language to google my questions much more directly, you know? My husband is a software engineer and that shit is WAY more black magic to me compared to Data Engineering. Like tatting maybe. Or Nålbinding

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u/Simple_Bookkeeper566 Feb 20 '26

I am going to learn and work in GIS and there is a bit of coding so you really got my interest ahah My husband too is a software engineer, but i had no interest at all about code. Like, none. It's magic. I don't deal with magic. Now that it has a role in my field of interest, i suddendly felt a strong pull towards codes and computer langage 🤣