Spyn: Weaving Stories into Handcrafted Artifacts

Spyn is a system for knitters to record, recall, and share information surrounding the process of handcraft. Using the yarn as a timeline of a knit's creation, Spyn allows knitters to associate digital annotations to knit yarn. The current prototype uses patterns of infrared ink printed on yarn in combination with computer vision techniques to associate locations in knit fabric with audio and visual messages recorded by the knitters during the knitting process. When users photograph the knit yarn using Spyn, the system analyzes the ink patterns on the yarn and visualizes events over the photograph of the knit. Over time, knitters weave a one-dimensional thread of yarn into a three-dimensional fabric of personal stories. In this paper I present a qualitative study of knitting practice and the iterative design of Spyn. INTRODUCTION Unlike machine-made objects, handcrafted objects often take significant time and skill to create. A handcrafted artifact can physically embody the skill and time involved in its production. For example, the subtle unevenness of stitches in a hand-knit textile may be an indication of the rhythm and tension of the knitter at the point in time the stitches were created. Moreover, handwork can be directly coupled with semantics such as representations of land, social organizations, and ideological systems (Heckman 2003). The knot work of the Inka Khipu, for instance, was used to encode different types of numerical and narrative data (Quilter and Urton, 2002). Handcrafted objects are " charged " with the history, narratives, and memories of the people who created them, as well as the people with whom they interact (Costin 1995; Ferber 2005; Macdonald 1988). Yet a handmade object itself cannot tell those personal stories of its making, and only hints at the human energy poured into its creation.