binary knitting

There are two parts to my technique, binary knitting.

First, there are the technical elements of how it works. Secondly, there is why this is my form of expression: why binary?

First, I was introduced to this concept through illusion knitting, an already established form, sometimes called shadow knitting. The idea being that from the front the image appears as stripes, and from the side the real image appears. This is achieved by knitting with two yarns.

Each yarn is knitted in a two row block. The first row creates a clean starting point, and the image is made using the second row, where the flat space created by a knit stitch disappears and the up of a purl stitch is visible from the side.

There are things that really worked for me about this, but there was also frustration with how much an image disappears or does not fully disappear and not knowing how much this happens because I can only look through my own eyes.

What I liked was the simplicity. The it being simply a decision of up or down. Like the 0 or 1 of binary code (what computers run on), hence my turn to the term binary. The utter simplicity of that choice and the vast, complicated systems we run off those simple choices. And I liked the difficulty of patterning in units that were not square, where the ratio of horizontal and vertical were quite off from each other, and really, one way, I could only use part of the space. And I liked how clean it was. Usually colourwork in knitting means having to carry the second yarn behind, having to be careful with how tight or loose it is and how much space it has to be carried over. Here there is none of that. It also limited my choices, created a closed system, which for me is very useful.

As I worked with illusion, I began to notice how much I liked the other side of my work. Here there was no clean first row, instead the first row is both of the yarns, and instead of what appears and disappears it became about the ratio of one colour to the other.

There are different considerations in how to work this way, but it is basically just the opposite of what I was doing, another binary. I am not aware of any one else working in this manner. Although I still use both these methods, this is my primary mode.

The other question is why I ended up here. There is the binary of so much of my life. From my best mark in my Arts degree being in computer science. From the Bipolar II diagnosis I have had since 17, the two extreme sides of my mood, and even the addition of II, the non-binary part, seeming to add to that. From learning in political studies that bipolar was the word also used for the world system during the cold war. From being obsessed with the question of form or substance introduced to me by secured creditor law. The question of whether we evaluate a thing on the basis of what it says it is or what it actually is. How much I want the answer to be substance and learning why form has to be considered too, as much as I still do not want to accept that.

And my own overly logical brain which has a problem seeing beyond black and white answers, which does not really get the grey in between that most people seem to see. I think that is why I have ended up in this second form, that is all about ratio, that is about both, how much of each instead of one pole or the other. Because I am trying to understand the actuality of what is, and doing it through what my hands have just naturally done, and what has soothed my soul to do, for over two decades. And in a way that gives life, because I find life in a well hand-knit item.

My subject matter also tends to be in two: life and death, beauty and pain, etc. For instance, the bare trees of spring four years ago, after the snow had melted, nothing had budded and all looked dead, even the trees themselves. And behind that the most brilliant blue sky, which seemed to just intensify day after day, which kept me stopping to look and take it all in. That juxtaposition being the basic of much of my tree imagery. Life and death, and living that appears as not.

Because at the end of the day it really isn’t a binary choice, because a knit stitch and a purl stitch are just two sides of the same thing. Turned around the up becomes down and the down up. Binary or non-binary, all part of one or endless gradations, the simplicity of the ideal or the complexity of the real, these are the questions I am asking.