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Knitting Goes High-Tech with Knit “Muscle” Fabric

January 27, 2017 by Sarah White

Knitting goes high-tech in the exoskeletons of the future.Knitting can be used for a lot of purposes other than making a warm hat or a pair of socks. And scientists keep coming up with ways to use knitting in medical procedures or in other cool ways that have the potential to make the world better for people.

Check out this story from Science Advances (via Science magazine) about knit and woven fabric that responds to electrical impulses and could be used one day as a form of synthetic muscle.

Researchers coated cellulose yarn with a polymer called polypyrrole, which stretches in response to electricity. They found that the yarn was stronger when woven and more flexible when knit, so it could be helpful in forming muscle-like attachments in future exoskeletons or prosthetic limbs.

Pretty cool, huh? Next time someone tells you knitting is old-fashioned, you’ll know how to respond.

[Photo via Science magazine.]

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Knit a Hat with a Flock of Chickens

It’s well known (among knitters, anyway) that knitters seem to love chickens as a motif and a subject of our knitting projects. The Emotional Support Chicken and all the other chicken knitting patterns are just the beginning of our devotion to farmyard friends. 

For example, there’s Farmer Dennis’ Chicken Hat. This free pattern from Stacy Black is a simple worsted weight beanie sized for adults and decorate with a couple of little rounds of colorwork fences and a flock of chickens strutting around the body of the hat. 

You don’t need a lot of any of the colors for the chickens, their facial features or the fences, so this is a great project for using little leftover bits from other projects. The main color for the body of the hat is less than a skein using the yarn suggested, so you might just have everything you need in your house to start stitching up this hat right away. 

The colorwork is presented as a chart, with a 16 stitch section that repeats around the body of the hat. All the color changes are shown on the chart but I think it would be easier to knit the whole chicken in the chicken color and add the eye, beak and other features using duplicate stitch when the knitting is done. That way you don’t have to carry those yarns around the whole hat for just a few stitches. 

As the name suggests, the original hat was given to a farmer who shared their eggs, but anyone who raises chickens or just has a thing for the fowl is sure to love this cute hat. It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone new to stranded knitting or reading charts to make, either, so if that’s you, give it a try. 

The pattern is available for free on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Stacy Black]

Knitting Patterns for Little Chicks

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