Designing Tessellating Knitting Patterns

My knitting machine comes with some crazy two-color knitting patterns, which its capable of executing one row at a time by way of a magnetic encoder switch. It sounds complicated, but the operator (me) just has to push the carriage back and forth across the needle bed instead of laboring over each stitch. The pattern gets programmed ahead of time into the machine’s computer. In order to tile properly, the gridded pattern must be a tessellating rectangle. If you poke around online, you can find a few tessellation generators that can help you make designs. Nathan Rosenquist designed the two patterns pictured. I’m having such a good time experimenting with colors!

More:

• Getting Used to My Knitting Machine
• Newsknitter
• Wind-Powered Knitting Machine