Wind Knitting Factory | Hacker News Reader

Wind Knitting Factory

merelkarhof.nl

290 pointsbschne65 comments

I 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

I'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?

Thread 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.

They might be sergering the edges.

Circular 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.

Take a look at the next T-shirt you put on. Or socks.

Can 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) :)

You'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.

Ah - that makes sense.

I was thinking of hand-knit clothing, which (as you say) tends to be big enough and chunky enough that you can see the stitches.

TIL - thanks :)

You can take a magnifying glass to any old t-shirt you have around. Or these days, you can also just take a snapshot with your smartphone and zoom in.

Compare with what you see on jeans and dress shirts, polo shirts, dress pants, socks, etc. It's quite interesting.

I don't think I've ever seen socks or T-shirts that weren't (machine) knitted. Knitting produces more stretchy fabric than weaving so it's better for garments that fit closely.

Yes. Dress shirts and jeans are common examples of woven fabrics.

There are also some technical fabrics that are neither woven nor knitted (nor crocheted) fabrics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonwoven_fabric

Most recent archive of the website: https://web.archive.org/web/20250614200747/https://www.merel...

This is delightfully weird, I love projects like this.

Knitting is programming. Read a knitting pattern and it's low level programming - knitters do not get enough credit.

Same 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.

Then I have to advertise the work of my father: https://oliviermasson.art/en/4-publications

Oh 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.

My dad and my brother are both working on textile industry. There is a world on engineering a fabric, with mathematical algorithms and calculations.

By that logic any instructions is programming and everyone on earth are programmers.

Sources say God is actually a software engineer

https://xkcd.com/224

I’m not sure that I’d say that it’s programming, but it is a pretty neat DSL

Instructions to machines probably are. Instructions to humans aren't because humans interpret things themselves and exercise free will in execution.

Written knitting instructions would benefit from a bit of standardisation and a system for depicting unusual stitches.

To an extent, yes (to the first part). For instance, the list of events scheduled for a performance is called a program.

Sure, why not?

Maybe the closest match to the current thread:

Tempus Nectit Knitting Clock - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35882735 - May 2023 (10 comments)

Other related links (did I miss any?):

Consider Knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44143199 - May 2025 (143 comments)

Algebraic Semantics for Machine Knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43763614 - April 2025 (20 comments)

Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43024540 - Feb 2025 (25 comments)

Semantics and scheduling for machine knitting compilers (2023) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40828754 - June 2024 (17 comments)

Unraveling the physics of knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40683130 - June 2024 (15 comments)

Show HN: Browser-based knitting (pattern) software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40307089 - May 2024 (29 comments)

A WWII spy who hid codes in her knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35613247 - April 2023 (78 comments)

Using the Silver Reed SK840 Knitting Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32897255 - Sept 2022 (19 comments)

Enabling Personal Computational Handweaving with a Low-Cost Jacquard Loom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423963 - June 2021 (6 comments)

Is Knitting Turing Complete? (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25715534 - Jan 2021 (1 comment)

‘Knitting Is Coding’ and Yarn Is Programmable in This Physics Lab - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19950589 - May 2019 (62 comments)

Woven silk prayer book created with punch cards on Jacquard loom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19252561 - Feb 2019 (1 comment)

Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536153 - March 2018 (36 comments)

Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538038 - June 2017 (12 comments)

A Compiler for 3D Machine Knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143482 - July 2016 (20 comments)

Nintendo Almost Made a Knitting Add-On for NES - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472337 - Sept 2012 (22 comments)

Knitting as programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3986758 - May 2012 (12 comments)

Simulated Knitting in Python - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3329533 - Dec 2011 (7 comments)

Knitting is an Acceptable Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484292 - Feb 2009 (6 comments)

---

plus the related topic of Jacquard looms:

How an 1803 Jacquard Loom Led to Computer Technology [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41052908 - July 2024 (5 comments)

Manual on Jacquard Hand Loom Weaver (Frame Loom) (2007) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23904850 - July 2020 (2 comments)

The Jacquard Loom: A Driver of the Industrial Revolution (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18261993 - Oct 2018 (4 comments)

Jacquard Loom: Early Computer Programing (2011) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993953 - Aug 2015 (9 comments)

Jacquard Loom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479430 - Oct 2014 (15 comments)

Programming Jacquard's loom (1801) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=691175 - July 2009 (2 comments)

Thanks so much for killing my next couple of days :)

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=weaving

For some more. Not all are related to fabrics.

If you happen to be there and like this sort of thing, the lace museum in Calais is definitely worth a visit:

Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode https://www.cite-dentelle.fr/en/

It's been about fifteen years since I visited, but they had a big section on the evolution of the techniques. It started from hand lace making, then progressed through periods of different looms. From memory, I'm pretty sure they had a punch-card loom about 200 years old, that was actually operating while I was there.

Knitting is more like executing a program. Designing a knitting pattern is programming.

Beautiful 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

I'm surprised it doesn't also operate at the intersection of art and technology.

boundary betweeen public and private space is an elementary object of social studies in general

International 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.

Is this something that can be seen in person?

Oh that device should look familiar to fans of Hand Tool Rescue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOCNaHMo2EI

This 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!

To 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.

In 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 ..

There'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.

> I asked Grok

I asked Grok and it said you didn't ask it.

Your Grok and my Grok should meet.

The page for buying a machine doesn't work :(

Not that i could likely afford it.

If you want a simpler version

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

I'm very disappointed there doesn't appear to be a Tom Scott video on this.

This! That would be awesomesauce. I haven't seen his videos in a while.

He retired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKv5H5Frt0

He 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.

He recently put out a video asking for new submissions, however they are uk only, and AFAIK this is in the netherlands, sadly

He 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.

Now we just need wind spinning, wind carding, wind shearing, and wind husbandry. Lots of vertical opportunity.

I’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.

“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.

I 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.”

Yes it looks like it is felted afterwards

The 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.

Is anyone else disappointed that you can't buy the wind-knitting device itself, only scarves knitted from the device? :)

you 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/

I 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.

I missed the (obvious) context and imagined an aircraft engine turbine attached.

High speed scarf-making!

I'm disappointed it doesn't make socks.

Every HNer knows your startup needs to maintain a moat /s

I'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.

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