trend report: needlepoint meets retro-digital

Pacman needlepoint magnets, from Flickr
Pacman was developed by Namco, released in Japan in 1980


Donkey Kong cross-stitch by Mecha Shiva, on CraftZine blog
Donkey Kong was originally developed by Nintendo, released in 1981


A needlepoint actual size replica of the Macintosh 128K, circa 1984
The Macintosh 128K was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer!
Needlepoint sculpture by Ben Fino-Radin by way of Boing Boing by way of Gizmodo

What is going on? I had no idea that writing this piece yesterday would lead me to uncover a very strange and very specific niche trend: needlepoint pieces of late 70s-early 80s digital technology are springing up all over. Pacman. Donkey Kong. A Mac. BASIC (the computer programming language). I would like to find one of Pong, and then this trend report would be complete.

In BASIC, the computer programming language of days past,
each line of code was numbered in increments of 10.
Here, a needlepoint pattern for "Home Sweet Home"
BASIC, short for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code,
originally designed in 1964, was popular in the 70s and 80s.
[image from counterjumper]