🤖 🧶 Machine Knitting - v1 Retro & Sweater Parties!

Hi friends,

My 'v1 Sweater' (made on a knitting machine, from 100% waste & scrap yarn) is finally done and just in time for this week’s post  If you’re reading this newsletter for the first time, you can catch up on the backstory of my circular knitting journey here.

Jumping right to the good stuff (pictures!) - I particularly love the shoulder seams & the back. Something's slightlyyy off with the neckline & the front, so I'll be revisiting my pattern & making adjustments there for future iterations:

It looks quite different from the sweater & materials I started with, no?

v1 Sweater Retro

Did I complete this machine-knitted sweater 10x faster than the hand-knitted sweater?? No.. but it took less than half as long (~20 hrs vs >50), and I’m just getting started with the knitting machine! Like a good Product Manager, I did a little retrospective on the v1 sweater process (if you’re curious, you can see the full retro here):

Overall takeaways: my goal is to establish a process for creating really awesome sweaters out of waste & scrap material. To do that, I need to A) further develop my machine knitting capabilities, especially around scrap yarn, and B) expand my materials/sourcing pipeline.

What’s next?

This has been such a fun personal project. And recently I’ve been considering - how can I start to scale this beyond the personal? Remanufacturing is a small space (but growing!) and I’m eager to be a part of it. So now I'm taking a step to test this project outside of myself.

Last Sunday, I invited a few close friends over for a ‘Sweater Party’ with only one requirement, “bring a sweater that’s damaged and/or that you don’t wear anymore”. My friends brought some really great items:

• A bright blue, chunky, cable-knit cardigan that’s in good condition but challenging to style (and therefore relegated to storage)

• A soft, cream-colored pullover that’s irreversibly stained

• A navy blue sweater with a big hole in the elbow.

They filled out a survey to decide if they wanted to ‘repair’ or ‘remake’ their sweater...

And over the next few weeks, I’ll document the process of giving new life to these sweaters. Now that I’m no longer the ‘end user', I’m sure I’ll run into some new considerations & challenges along the way. Thanks for following along!

Best,
Anne