And now…the project I am most proud of up to date and the one I’ve spent the most time on.

Spring break, as usual, I would have too much time to be bored and neurotic. So I came up with a project. I designed a hypothetical pattern of ones and zeros against a black background to crochet the binary heart from the xkcd comic: http://www.xkcd.com/99/. I thought I would give up long before it was done.

As I started crocheting, my roommates would look over curiously. It started out as white dots against a black strip. As it turned into clear binary numbers, Tesla Coil became obsessed with the idea that it spelled out something—since I wouldn’t tell her what it was really going to be. It took me ten weeks to complete. I originally intended to crochet one row a day and finish it around October, but inevitably I’d finish a row and then persuade myself I could stop after another one and another one.

It was a huge project so there are many things that went on while I was making it. I watched through Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away again and way more episodes of Firefly than I care to count. I listened to Beethoven, Sibelius, Brahms, Shostakovich; so much epic music, pieces I’d known for years and pieces I’d just started listening to. Memories of Russian Spy coming home, standing in my doorway, ranting about whatever frustration she had in lab or swimming that day while I continued crocheting my blanket. Tesla Coil discussing with me the finer details of relationships in Kingdom Hearts or Dr. Who.

This blanket is by far the largest project I’ve undertaken and completed. I think the best thing about having such a large project is that all the work that went into it has been accompanied by my thoughts, both happy and sad, my conversations, the movies and TV episodes I watched, the music I listened to, the feelings of relaxation after long days in the lab.

I took a picture and sent it to Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd.

I designed the blanket to have a white double line border, but after fiddling around with different border designs, decided it looked better with a simple one row black border to neaten the edges. Me with the obligatory black hat:

Here are some guidelines and rules I developed for my blanket.

ch. 171.

Row 1, 2: Sc second ch from hook. 1 sc in every st all the way across. Ch 1 to turn.

Rows 3 and onward: Every binary number exists in a grid of 6 x 8 squares. So a zero would look like this:

and a one would look like this:

Each colored square represents a white stitch (or red once you get to the heart) and each white square represents a black stitch. Between each “rectangle” of binary there are two black stitches and between each row of binary there are two black rows. If you use the “carry through” method (tapestry crochet) of changing colors, you need to carry the white (or red) color even through the two rows that are completely black because this will maintain the thickness throughout the blanket.

I followed the binary in the comic exactly, but you can make whatever random numbers you want. I also used the comic as a guideline for where I should shape the heart, but again, if you’re feeling creative, make your own heart variation.