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Wind Knitting Factory
- MikeTheGreat 1y agoIs anyone else disappointed that you can't buy the wind-knitting device itself, only scarves knitted from the device? :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ashurov 1y agoyou could, but the (original) website is from 2009...so probably not enough interest to keep that up. The old link is dead: https://windknittingfactory.bigcartel.com/ https://windknittingfactory.bigcartel.com/
- imzadi 1y agoI doubt it would be difficult to make. You can buy the knitting machine on amazon. They usually have a handle you can crank unless it is electric. Just attach a turbine to the handle.
- rkagerer 1y agoI missed the (obvious) context and imagined an aircraft engine turbine attached.
- voidUpdate 1y agoHigh speed scarf-making!
- c22 1y agoI'm disappointed it doesn't make socks.
- radpanda 1y agoEvery HNer knows your startup needs to maintain a moat /s
- mhb 1y agoI'd be surprised/impressed if the knitting machine itself was a DIY project. I know this is art, but to be overly reductive, it's the same as buying your electricity from a wind farm and using it to power your knitting machine.
- MikeTheGreat 1y agoI'm curious about how you 'harvest' a section of tube without it unraveling. Maybe cut it around, remove the little bits of yarn, then unravel a ways on purpose, and knit the unraveled yarn through the edge like a normal bind-off?
- MandieD 1y agoThread a flexible needle (usually called "circular") or a wire through a full row near the cut, unravel the remaining rows, then take a fine crochet hook to chain the loops together. Or just hem it, but that doesn't look like what she does.
- imzadi 1y agoThey might be sergering the edges.
- ethan_smith 1y agoCircular knitting typically uses a technique called "grafting" or "Kitchener stitch" to close tubes seamlessly without unraveling - you'd temporarily secure stitches on holders, cut one strand, then use a tapestry needle to mimic the path of the yarn through the live stitches.
- bregma 1y agoTake a look at the next T-shirt you put on. Or socks.
- MikeTheGreat 1y agoCan I ask you to expand on this? I've never worn knit socks, and I don't think I've ever seen a knit T-shirt, so I'm not quite sure what to look for (or at) :)
- Wingman4l7 1y agoYou've likely worn knit socks and T-shirts -- they're machine-knit. A lot of clothing is knit, not woven. Fabric does not have to use big and chunky threads to be knit; the loops can be quite a small gauge in size.
- Luc 1y agoMost recent archive of the website: https://web.archive.org/web/20250614200747/https://www.merelkarhof.nl/work/wind-knitting-factory https://web.archive.org/web/20250614200747/https://www.merel...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jkhalaj 1y agoKnitting is programming. Read a knitting pattern and it's low level programming - knitters do not get enough credit.
- srean 1y agoSame with weaving, especially the way symmetry is weft in. Jaccard looms are too general, too unconstrained. I like shaft looms more gratifying. Their restrictions make it more interesting.
- arthursw 1y agoThen I have to advertise the work of my father: https://oliviermasson.art/en/4-publications https://oliviermasson.art/en/4-publications
- srean 1y agoOh WOW. It is from some summary of your dad's book that I had understood how shaft looms work. Such beautiful weaves and such a small world. Happy meeting you here. A reissue of your dad's book would be wonderful.
- lormayna 1y agoMy dad and my brother are both working on textile industry. There is a world on engineering a fabric, with mathematical algorithms and calculations.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- charcircuit 1y agoBy that logic any instructions is programming and everyone on earth are programmers.
- y-curious 1y ago
- gcanyon 1y agoI'm very disappointed there doesn't appear to be a Tom Scott video on this.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThis! That would be awesomesauce. I haven't seen his videos in a while.
- tiagod 1y agoHe retired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKv5H5Frt0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKv5H5Frt0
- nativeit 1y agoHe retired the format a few years ago. Now he just does game shows and random projects with his friends, which...fair enough, that's what I'd do with a pile of passive YouTube income.
- voidUpdate 1y agoHe recently put out a video asking for new submissions, however they are uk only, and AFAIK this is in the netherlands, sadly
- Pyrodogg 1y agoHe recently did one of those "this video will delete in X hours" bits where he asked people to email him different places, people, things to check out. He very, very clearly has no interest in returning to weekly videos on-location; more deeper dives or just something different.
- socki 1y agoIs this something that can be seen in person?
- data-ottawa 1y agoThis is delightfully weird, I love projects like this.
- metalman 1y agoI spent a couple of days building staircases inside a rope factory, kinda thing that I would just add a glass wall and put in a coffee shop, it's an odd thing to watch something solid materialise out of a intricate repetitive motion that happens ever so slightly faster that you can track. different rig than the wind knitter but both I think are clasified as braiders
- dmkolobov 1y agoBeautiful work. As an off-topic observation, whenever I see something like the phrase “operates between the public and the private space” I immediately think: this person definitely went to art school :P
- ragazzina 1y agoI'm surprised it doesn't also operate at the intersection of art and technology.
- asimovfan 1y agoboundary betweeen public and private space is an elementary object of social studies in general
- myself248 1y agoInternational Art English is a well-documented, and mercilessly mocked (and deservedly so!) phenomenon, which thrusts the creator's image of self into the spotlight and questions assumptions about their ability for self-expression at the intersection of rational thought and plain language, through pervasive use of meaningless and tortured constructions, abject puffery, and run-on sentences.
- stickfigure 1y agoOh that device should look familiar to fans of Hand Tool Rescue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOCNaHMo2EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOCNaHMo2EI
- boffinAudio 1y agoThis is a great idea .. I wonder if it can be adapted to using recycled plastic threads, so that a fleet of these could be deployed into the ocean to recover plastics, turn them into nets, and use those nets to .. recover more plastic? If I were shipwrecked on a tropical island, I'd make it my daily task to work out how to build something like this, into which I can feed plastic bottles, and get a brand new material that could be used for more construction. Sure, knitting scarves is neat. But knitting a weather-proof shelter? Hell yeah!
- jnovacho 1y agoTo recycle plastic, the only viable way is to melt it. And the plastic must be very clean before it can be remelted. If it even is a kind of plastic that can be reheated multiple times. I am afraid the short answer is no.
- boffinAudio 1y agoIn the context of ocean plastic recovery/harvesting, I don't know that the purity is all that important - the more important factor is, collection. Being able to take plastic bottles and turn them into a kind of string, for example, seems more viable - if a hopper could be designed which takes a plastic bottle, rotates it around a stripping knife, and the output is a long twine - this could then be fed into the knitting machine. I imagine this rube-goldberg'esque strandebeest-like contraption sitting out there harvesting wind and waves, slowly turning every bottle it gorges on into a finely woven matte of materials .. maybe even reproducing itself, who knows .. EDIT: I asked Grok to design a self-replicating ocean weaver, and I have to say .. it seems like a viable idea to me. Perhaps we will see this kind of plastic harvesting in the near future .. at the very least, were I to be stranded on a plastic-laden island, I'm pretty sure I could work out a way to build a raft with sails ..
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThere's some (fairly simple) devices in use or that you can make yourself to turn bottles into a kind of thread, but it's very hard to automate because bottles will be different in shape and condition. But as you say, turning them into something else isn't the critical part, collecting them in the first place is. The most important thing is taking them out of the environment so they stop breaking down into microplastics and the like. Personally I think all these creative solutions for reusing plastics aren't so important. Collect it and put it in a giant landfill like an old open mine, bury it and forget about it until a future generation invents an efficient way to recycle it, then mine it like a resource.
- throwaway474843 1y agoI’d like to see a video of the full process. The reason is that the scarves in the online shop look very tight and possibly created by something else. There is nothing that would prevent the seller from doing this legitimately if that is the case, because Wind Knitting Factory may just be the brand. I’d like to think the scarves in their online shop are fully knitted by the wind, though.
- pamby 1y ago“Every scarf gets a label which tells you the time and the date on which the wind made the scarf.” I think it’s real.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- roxolotl 1y agoI assume there’s gearing to improve consistency. There’s definitively post processing though as it’s knitting a tube. “Occasionally the knitwear gets ‘harvested’ and transformed into scarves.”
- Schattenbaer 1y agoYes it looks like it is felted afterwards
- codingdave 1y agoThe circular sock knitting machines, as pictured on the site, absolutely make high quality socks. My wife has a niche business teaching classes on how to use those machines, making and selling socks, etc. The part that would be missing from a wind-powered solution is the actual shaping of the sock. She spends a lot of time as she works futzing with the hooks on the machine to create the heel, toe, ribbing, etc. I'm not an expert in what she does, but I see enough to know that if this is just a turbine spinning the machine, you'd get a uniform tube, which would then be post-processed into individual fairly shapeless socks. Hand-crafting would shape the socks better, but the basic tubes are high quality even if unshaped. There is also definitely a niche-within-a-niche of people who work on these machines coming up with all kinds of non-sock applications for well-knit tubes of fiber. Scarves are an obvious one, but re-working different sizes of tubes to create stuffed animals is one of the more fun ones.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dibora13 1y ago[dead]
- lawlessone 1y agoThe page for buying a machine doesn't work :( Not that i could likely afford it.
- socalgal2 1y agoIf you want a simpler version https://www.amazon.com/SENTRO-knitting-machines-intelligent-childrens/dp/B08MYK186W?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/SENTRO-knitting-machines-intelligent-... Connect it to a wind powered generator or find a way to make a wind crank. Yea, I know, it's not the same as a cool metal one and that video is from 2009
- jbaber 1y agoNow we just need wind spinning, wind carding, wind shearing, and wind husbandry. Lots of vertical opportunity.