A lovely evening to you, my colleagues. For your enjoyment tonight, I have just finished transcribing a letter between two friends – two NEW friends for our ranks – that I hope you find as interesting as I do.
Dearest Alyssa,
It’s been a most busy few weeks for me. I have to admit that while a letter from you is always most welcome, as it is sure to be full of your latest exploits, somehow they often are quite the distraction as well. The description of your latest endeavour, with your need to convey an encoded message naturally piqued my interest as it fits nicely with the mathematical principles I’ve been pursuing of late. I haven’t had any time to address my knitting basket with my latest explorations into cryptography.
Ah..what joy it does bring to bury myself with nothing more than a pile of paper, a pot of ink and my own thoughts to spin through the possibilities found within the beauty of numbers. I shall have to think further on the best solution for the conundrum you posed. Perhaps I shall consult with Monsieur Baudot for his thoughts on the matter of encoding messages in a secure manner.
Now if only I could knit and write at the same time. I’ve come across the most delightful self-referential, self-similar images and I would so love to render them with thread and needles. Perhaps I should be working on the idea of manipulating time instead of words and numbers! But alas, that is far beyond the scope of my own research. Perhaps a second pair of hands to knit for me would be more appropriate!
I look forward to meeting again in the near future
All My Best
Julia Sett
I must admit, the concepts Miss Sett is referencing here go a bit over my scholarly head. (Clearly math nerds have been around for some time.) I’ll begin scouring the artifacts ASAP for any evidence of her knitted creations; with such a mind for codes and formulas, I’m sure they were quite impressive! I’m also intrigued by these exploits she’s pen-palling about with the mysterious Alyssa. It doesn’t sound like Miss Sett gets out much (no offense), so I can just imagine what fun it would be to wait for the next titillating tidbit to arrive by post. Mischief indeed… I’ll be certain to keep an eye out for more information on this Alyssa as well. So many ladies, so many questions! It’s beginning to feel a bit like a certain desert-island-related TV show to me… But fear not! I’m nearly through the uppermost layer, which appears to have been simply thrown on top in a most disorganized manner. For being so brilliant, our Ladies of Mischief clearly were in need of a secretary! Well, I hope to make up for it as their self-elected Historian. Until next time!
~The Archivist
The Ladies of Mischief 