#knitting machine

[fieldsatelier]

1940s Dutch Fair Isle Bonnet I finished knitting last week :)

[byebi-babey]

so excited with how these came out 🖤🤍

https://fansly.com/adoptagirl

[blondebrainpowered]

Machine knitted sock monkey dress at the Minnesota State Fair, 2006.

Created by Rebecca Yaker

[the-knitting-pirate]

Testing the crossposting feature with this one, sorry in advance if it doesn't work properly! ETA: okay yeah I guess that's not great... hrmph

In Which the Pirate Has Cats.

[milkweedman]

The knitting machine arrived yesterday ! I have been practicing on it... 5 completed hats so far.

They are reversible, which makes them much warmer, very easy to finish (literally less than 2 minutes of finishing work per hat, its great), and allows the wearer to pick a side they prefer which is great because I do not know the recipients or what they like, as they are for donations. Im pleased with my work so far, imperfect as it is.

I wanted to make gloves on this as well, but my turning machine would be a lot less convenient for flat knitting--although it is possible. We'll see; I'll probably try it this weekend.

Lots of rambling below (ive spent all day working on hats so i have a lot of thoughts lmao)

However, theres a problem. I cast on probably more like 10-15 hats total, but had to keep frogging them because it turns out the majority of my yarn is too stiff to use without big problems.

At least, I think thats the issue. Its definitely the yarn and not the machine/electric turner (i removed the turning machine briefly to hand crank on a yarn that I had already determined to be problematic, and it continued being problematic when hand cranked). I thought at first it was the thickness, then I thought it was a combination of thickness and stiffness, but the very last hat I made (the leftmost one) that yellow/white/blue yarn is quite thin but somewhat stiff, and it looks very messy. I was watching the machine and it seems if it doesnt bend enough then it causes the manual knitting equivalent of not removing a worked stitch from the needle (and therefore having 2 live loops right on top of each other)...not sure how to word that error, but thats what's happening. Unfortunately its a lot harder to fix on the machine then on manual knitting because second most recent round of stitches is always hidden.

However, it does work perfectly with yarn that is not stiff. So im very pleased about that. I will just have to use the stiffer yarn for manual knitting or crochet.

I might also end up needing to buy some yarn to keep up with demand for hats (given how quickly we hand them out--we could probably go through a dozen a day if there were that many hats, but id at least like to do 3 a day if i could. Its a lot better than nothing and i am but one guy)...I was really hoping to use solely donated yarn, but im quickly running out of the not-stiff stuff, especially because its 2 layers.

Kind of needs to be 2 layers though, because 1) its not warm otherwise and 2) i would need to do so much more finishing work for a 1 layer hat which I have absolutely no intention of doing.

So... much to think about. I might go to the creative reuse store thats only like a 15 minute bus ride from my house and look for suitable acrylic. I would definitely prefer secondhand stuff... im really not big on the environmental impact, but acrylic is the most suitable yarn for donation hats for homeless folks. Cotton is nowhere near as warm, wool will shrink when washed (and even if people know that and know how to handwash wool and are willing to do so, the majority of people do not have a means to dry a wool hat in the winter). So that really just leaves acrylic.

[talos-stims]

sock knitting machine | source

[listlesscatpotato]

The AI argument reminds me a lot of the knitting machine discourse in the craft community:

People who used knitting machines claimed its the same as knitting, they should be able to sell their finished pieces for the same price, and they count as crafters. Most people who actually and genuinely craft disagree. Youre just turning a fucking handle, its not the same as crafting. Youre missing all the effort that goes into making it a truly hand-crafted piece of work. Its basically machine made with you controlling the machine.

AI is pretty much the same. You're not doing the work. Youre using a machine to get a desired output. You can call it a tool all you want, a knitting machine is a tool, but the end result is fundementally different, having been touched by human hands versus not. A child's crappy drawing has more passion, more creativity, and more heart that your little machine made output is lacking.

You do a diservice to yourself and everyone else when you take the easy way and use a simplified tool instead of leaning the craft. There's a reason why that as industrialized forms of crafts are used for profit, the human-made form is used for actual passion.