Clear Eyes, Full Channels Wrap

Serial Digital Communication channels are all around us – Ethernet, WiFi, and USB are just a few of them. If you look at one of these channels on an oscilloscope, you’ll see images like these, called “eye patterns”.

The bigger the eye, the easier it is for the receiver to sample the data, and the better the channel quality is. Between the eyes, you see the “jitter” in the signal – the variance is the rise and fall times of the signal transitions with respect to a common clock. The more jitter there is, the smaller the eye gets.

I’m an Electrical Engineer by day, and I’ve had the opportunity to see plenty of eye patterns as I debug communication systems. They inspired me to create the stitch pattern for this wrap.

The architecture of Clear Eyes, Full Channels is quite simple: it is a rectangular wrap worked from the bottom edge up. Colors alternate each 8-row pattern repeat. The stitch pattern represents an eye pattern: one large eyelet forms the eye, and twisted stitches represent the jittery data transitions in between them. The wrap is worked at a loose gauge on larger needles than typically used with DK yarn to provide a nice, drapey fabric.

Yarn

Blue Mule Fiber Dibe` DK (100% 19.5 Micron Long Staple Superwash Merino; 211 yds [193 m]/100g): Judge Roy Bean (MC), 3 skeins, Flecking Ride’Em Cowboy (CC), 3 skeins.

Thanks to Blue Mule for providing the yarn!

Needle

Size US 8 (5mm) needles, at least 36″ (90cm) circulars

Or size needed to obtain gauge

Gauge

18 sts and 20 rows = 4″ [10cm] in St st

16 sts and 19 rows = 4″ [10cm] in patt after blocking

Size

62” [157.5 cm] long and 22.5” [57cm] wide

Notions

Tapestry needle

Abbreviations

See our standard abbreviations.