Why can’t machines crochet?
In: 5532
A lot of people in the replies are confusing crochet and knitting (probably because they are the same word in many languages). I think understanding the difference between them is key to understanding why we’ve had knitting machines since the 1500’s but still no crochet machine. Both are made by pulling loops of yarn through other loops to make fabric, but the methodology is different.
When you knit, you have a number of live stitches (open loops) all held open at once by the knitting needle (or by individual hooks on a knitting machine or knitting loom). The number of loops is the width of your finished fabric, and each time you work all of them, you make the fabric one row longer. You make patterns by adding new loops in different ways (increases), removing loops (decreasing), changing the order of loops (cables), skipping working loops on some rows (slipped stitch patterns, mosaic knitting), by pulling the yarn through the loop in different directions (through the back loop, purling), among other ways. However, with knitting you are working in two dimensions and the next stitch in the row is usually the next stitch worked. It is very easy to mechanize.
Crochet is not limited in this way. When crocheting, you work one loop at a time. The next loop can be pulled through in any direction you choose, from anywhere you choose. You can use the front or back of the loop or both the back and front – and any of these options can be approached from the front or back of the fabric. You can use the “neck” (post) of the old loop rather than the loop itself – and you can use it in counter-clockwise or clockwise direction (i.e., “work around the post”). You aren’t limited to working each stitch that is open, because each loop is “closed” after it is stitched – you don’t leave “live” loops on the hook like you do with knitting. So you can skip loops (as many as you want), use the same loop over and over, or suddenly make a long chain of stitches going off to nowhere, to be reconnected (or not) wherever you choose. You can change direction wherever you like without having to deal with all the knitting techniques for “short rows”. You can make a single stitch nearly flat (slip stitch / single crochet) or very tall (treble / triple stitch). Crochet is a truly 3-dimensional craft – you can make hyperbolic shapes trivially easily.
So a crochet machine – to fully replicate handmade crochet – needs to be able to manipulate the piece in 360 degrees on every axis, and accurately insert the crochet hook into the next intended target… which could be any point on the worked piece. This is not trivial to mechanize, though easy enough to imitate a more 2-D version of it (as others have noted) with weft-knitting machines.
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