Hello. My name is John Young, and I am a nerd.
I make websites and write code for a living, so in my free time I'm attracted to things that irrefutably exist. Like greasy 1970s BMW motorcycles, and movies on heavy, inconvenient 16MM film reels. And especially those two things combined. I also really like dense, textural needlepoint, which has a lot in common with pixel art. Instead of being made of electrons, phosphor, and worry, though, needlepoint is made of canvas, starch, wool, and time. A needlepoint cover for a brick doorstop will very probably exist in its original form in fifty or even a hundred years. Unlike, oh... every line of code written for an interactive website.
I made a needlepoint pillow top on 13-count mono canvas containing the 2D barcode for "Pillow" at Semapedia. It's a pillow, and it says "pillow" in the machine-readable code, but you can't read that code unless you have a cameraphone or a frickin' laser beam. So it's pretty nerdy. It got picked up by Craft Magazine, then by BoingBoing, and most recently got a brief mention in the NY Times.
If you have any questions about creating the wourld's very first Rap Chop kleenex box cover, please email me at !
I make websites and write code for a living, so in my free time I'm attracted to things that irrefutably exist. Like greasy 1970s BMW motorcycles, and movies on heavy, inconvenient 16MM film reels. And especially those two things combined. I also really like dense, textural needlepoint, which has a lot in common with pixel art. Instead of being made of electrons, phosphor, and worry, though, needlepoint is made of canvas, starch, wool, and time. A needlepoint cover for a brick doorstop will very probably exist in its original form in fifty or even a hundred years. Unlike, oh... every line of code written for an interactive website.
I made a needlepoint pillow top on 13-count mono canvas containing the 2D barcode for "Pillow" at Semapedia. It's a pillow, and it says "pillow" in the machine-readable code, but you can't read that code unless you have a cameraphone or a frickin' laser beam. So it's pretty nerdy. It got picked up by Craft Magazine, then by BoingBoing, and most recently got a brief mention in the NY Times.
I'm having a great time continuing to explore QRcode needlepoint. If you'd like to buy a pattern, you can do so in my Storenvy store!.
If you have any questions about creating the wourld's very first Rap Chop kleenex box cover, please email me at !
Other nerdy needlework links
(Last updated in 2008; please let me know what should be added!)
- DOS-stitch: tracert output in cross-stitch. It was this awesome project, plus the memory of my grandmother's First City Troop needlepoint footstool, that made me want to try needlepoint. Lots more of Kate Pemberton's stuff here.
- The KnitPro Web App: create a .pdf stitch chart from any .gif, .jpg, or .png image. It's really, really useful since the PDF separates the pixels into easy-to read boxes. For notes on how to get a semacode rezzed exactly right, check out this blog post.
- Nintendo DS case: needlepoint on plastic canvas, with really nice finishing. I see that Rosemary Travale, the wonderful illustrator who made it, did her own chart in Illustrator, too.
- What else should be here? Please let me know in the comments.