At present I am reading a marvellous novel about history, science, alchemy in the 17th century, part One of The Baroque Cycle, written by Neal Stephenson. Part One alone has 900 pages... It is a great book, but for mu (us) it turned out even better when a lady spy, Eliza, started to write encrypted messages in her needlework. The way she did it was amazing. She 'wrote' in a binary code: depending on which leg of the cross was up, each cross depicted a 1 or a 0. Groups of 5 represent numbers and they stand for letters from the alphabet. In this way she was just an innocent lady sewing her time away (once even in a treetop by moonlight...) I started wondering: what an idea, what an amount of work. But most probably, it looks awful.... But still: great! Just wanted to share this with you.
Alma from Poland.