Page 339 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

Crochet Work-History and Computer Applications 329

collaborator can be drawn outside a paradigm. The knowledge base provides
new tools with which to characterize stylistic and construction aspects of a
design, and these new techniques can inspire new ways of thinking.

Image storage and retrieval

A growing number of libraries, museums, and art galleries are maintaining im-
age databases of their non-text holdings. The vast majority of these databases
require the image to be manually given a textual description. A textual format
has obvious drawbacks: a picture is indeed worth at least a thousand words,
as an attempt to list all possible terms that describe even a simple image will
demonstrate. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are often sig-
nificant differences between the language used by the document classifier and
the language of the client searching the database. Indeed, for many domains,
such as crochet patterns, there is no standard or even widely accepted vocab-
ulary with which to describe the images. Additional disadvantages include an
inability to effectively search on spatial relationships between image elements
and an inability to easily describe complex structures.
We developed a system that permits users to search through a set of
crochet lace patterns for a pattern containing a specific motif [6]. The user
described the motif by drawing it, and could make either exact queries ('find
patterns containing exactly the motif that I've drawn'), or fuzzy queries ('find
patterns that look something like this, but that might be shorter and fatter,
or taller and thinner'). By combining simple exact or fuzzy queries, the user
can also express desired spatial relationships between several motifs, such as
`find patterns containing a pineapple motif to the left of a column, and above
a wheat ear motif'. The techniques for describing the crochet patterns, stor-
ing these descriptions on the computer, and then performing searches can be
applied to other types of complex pictures as well: for example, electrical di-
agrams, architectural designs, and CAD (Computer Aided Design) diagrams.

New directions?

Surprisingly, the versatile, popular, and long-lived craft of crochet has received
little scholarly attention. Few books or articles seriously explore its history,
and unlike knitting or knotting its mathematical characteristics have not been
investigated. These omissions may be partly ascribed to its status as a craft,
rather than as a fine art; partly to its association with the lower levels of
society (the poor, and women); and partly to the sheer difficulty of locating
primary historic materials. Even acquiring a good set of reliably dated pat-
terns is difficult: many were printed informally or scattered through popular