By hacking a domestic knitting machine, a software engineer advanced modern knitting and made a massive equatorial star map in tapestry form. Australian software engineer Sarah Spencer spent years hacking and programming a 1980s domestic knitting machine for fun. This hobby grew into much more, however, as Spencer developed a new computer algorithm that did something never before accomplished with such machines. Her accomplishment — knitting with bird's-eye backing using one knit per pixel in three colors — might not mean much to anyone outside of the knitting community. But this achievement allowed Spencer to make something truly out of...