Nice writeup! I was hoping to see a photo of the fractal on your wall.. Nice link to Knuth video that I somehow have missed.
https://chriskw.xyz/images/fractal/thumbnail.jpg
I think it would work perfectly as a mosaic eventually, but for the time being I'm perfectly content with the "rustic" 8x11 graph paper sized one taped to the wall. Currently planning to put up a slice of the orthotopeflower as a companion piece once I find matches for the colored pencils I used back then.