Teaching a computer to write knitting patterns

 is the subject of a very funny article on the Interweave Knits website. It is actually called "Operation Hilarious Knitting Disaster. Here's the link if you want to read it:

 https://www.interweave.com/article/knitting/operation-hilarious-knitting-disaster-the-ai-that-tried-to-learn-to-knit/?fbclid=IwAR

Recently I have had to think a lot about knitting patterns and how they are written. I have also had to write a few knitting patterns in my time. Yesterday I was introduced to someone as, "You know my brown beanie? Well this is Cat, she gave me the pattern and she is helping with the pullover."

What's so unusual about that? Well the knitter is a man who spun the wool himself but then wasn't quite sure where to go next. He stopped me in the supermarket one day and, on the back of an envelope, he scribbled the instructions I gave him. They seemed to work. He wears the beanie in winter and has done for several years now.

Was it a pattern? Perhaps it was. It was a set of guidelines. Since then he has spun himself enough yarn to make himself a pullover. We took the pattern writing for that a little more seriously. A pullover's worth of hand spun yarn is a lot of work. Neither of us wanted to see that effort wasted. He wasn't going to find a pattern to fit him very easily. He is tall and so thin he looks anorexic despite his efforts to put on weight. He has other medical and mental health issues. They are partly why I have given him the help he needs.

He is a highly intelligent man who has been through some severe traumas in his life. I tried to get him to join the knitting group I belonged to or to come to the group at the library. He just shakes his head and goes on talking about the yarn he is spinning. 

"The next lot is going to be BFL," he tells me. "BFL" is a type of sheep, a Blue Faced Leicester. He tells me it is "lovely" to spin. When I ask him what he is going to do with it he tells me he is going to make a small lap rug to raffle off for a charitable group he belongs to. 

"I think I'll do it in strips. That should give it a bit of stability." 

We went our separate ways. He has grown so much in crafting confidence over the few years I have known him. He could only knit and purl when I stood there in the aisle and dictated those beanie instructions to him.  He knows far more about spinning than I do.  

I sent him the link to the article. His response was, " Fantastic. I might write some code into the rug , a sort of secret message. A computer will never do that."

Oh yes, he's learning a lot. I wonder whether a computer will ever be able to take hand spun yarn and write a pattern and then knit it? I really don't think they will ever do that.