Kniterate: Like a 3-D Printer for Knitwear

If you’ve ever used a knitting machine designed for home use you know how laborious it can be. You still have to do a lot of the work by hand, such as ribbing, increasing and decreasing, and of course all the pieces of a garment would have to sewn together once the knitting was done.

Industrial knitting machines can do all that automatically, but they’re much too large and expensive for home use. Brother used to make electronic knitting machines for home use that some people have hacked in really cool ways, but there’s not a good option for people who want to use knitting machines at home that are more automated than the currently available models.

That may change with the advent of Kniterate, an automated knitting machine that will use more industrial needles and software to allow for more professional and varied knitwear design for home use and maker spaces. A report on Make talks about how the machine might work, as a purchased unit possibly with open-source programming and the ability to share patterns among users.

The machine is likened to a 3-D printer in the way it might revolutionize knitwear production for hobbyists and making protoypes. It sounds really cool and will be interesting to see how it all works out.

[Photo via Make.]

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I’m not saying you have six different colors of super bulky yarn in your stash, but if you did, this would be a great use for it.

Anastasia’s Cardigan from Anastasia Pargett and Andi Satterlund is a cute, boxy, colorblocked cardigan with an open front that would be a fun first sweater pattern or first playing with color sweater.

It comes in 10 sizes, ranging from a chest measurement of 34 to 70 inches (that’s 86.4 to 177.8 cm for our metric friends). There’s no shaping at all except a little bit on the sleeves, so its a great choice for knitters of any skill level. The color changes are easy to do because all the pieces are worked separately and seamed together. And because there are different colors everywhere your seams don’t even have to be perfect to line up different blocks of color.

In addition to the color blocking options (which of course you could tone down if you don’t want as many color changes or don’t have that many colors) there are other ideas for customization through surface stitching. One of the versions shown here, for example, only uses five colors, while one uses contrasting yarn for the bands and more stitching to highlight the color changes on the sleeves.

If you don’t happen to have a ton of super bulky yarn on hand, you could make this an odd ball project by working multiple strands of worsted or other weights of yarn held together. Change colors when the pattern suggests or just whenever you run out of yarn to make it colorful and fun to knit and wear.

The pattern is available for free from Knit Picks, where you can also make yourself a kit using the suggested Fluff of the Andes yarn, a singles yarn made of Peruvian Highland wool that’s available in 26 colors.

[Photo via Knit Picks]

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