Look out! It's Steel Granny!
(and she’s come to take away our handknitting)
Ok, not quite, but I found this quite interesting. The well-known Swedish School of Textiles is working on a project to mechanize knitted garment production at the consumer level:
The main purpose of the project is presenting a production method for knitted garments that may greatly influence the fashion industry’s ability to meet new and changing demands from the customers.
For means of comparison, think about the machines that scan you for custom jeans production. Everyone loves denim, everyone loves jeans, but it’s impractical to keep all sizes of all styles on hand at all times. Don’t believe me? Ask someone who works in retail, or go shopping with me some time.
If a sweater machine could truly produce customized garments on the fly, I might actually buy sweaters in a store, provided the interface allowed for my own little design quirks. Jeans are jeans, but sweaters are truly individual. I don’t want to choose only the color or the neck style, I want to pick which cables go where and how.
Call me when that technology is available and I’ll really be psyched.
I’m close to the extreme end of progressive when it comes to technology but I just keep thinking that this is so wrong.