Originally published at: Tiny handmade knitting machine by Maartje Boer | Boing Boing
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It’s cute, but it’s not actually knitting 
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Yeah - that’s what I wondered. The resident knitting expert is not available to consult right now, but it did not look to me to be doing any actual knitting.
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It’s obvious it’s not knitting anything, the number of loops on either needle do not change. Let’s just call it the “Knitting Machine Prank”.
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Human slaves were easier to obtain. (In folklore, elves were Not Nice.)
I don’t mind that it doesn’t knit. Dolls and toys aren’t actually alive, but they stoke the imagination. Portraits aren’t the actual person, but rather a selective representation that may ignore some qualities of the person and introduce other aspects that only the artist sees in their imagination.
True this “knitting machine” doesn’t actually knit, but I love it anyway. It’s totally cute! And playful! And cheerful yellow! And miniature! And handmade of wire!
One of the typical measures of a successful artwork is Does it engage the viewer? I’d say that probably anyone who knits or who has a mechanical mind will naturally engage with it and try to figure out if it could or couldn’t actually knit—I certainly did.
Anyway, I find it delightful. Even though I do knit myself, a fanciful “knitting” machine is alright with me.
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I did some historical research into knitting once.
Archeologists - “We decide what is and isn’t knitting, fight us.”
Historians - “No, we decide what knitting is and also when it happened and we all disagree with each other vehemently.”
Knitters - “This is what I call knitting, but you can call whatever that is knitting if you want to. I won’t get mad, fam.”
(I recognize that people producing reference work need to have standards, definitions and categories, and contentious dialogue is part of how that evolves, but I found it amusingly apropos that the crafters were such a relatively calm and friendly community.)
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