Our campaign ended yesterday and we had much to celebrate, the most important thing being the incredible support of our 488 backers!

For the momentous occasion, our brilliant advisors Freddie Robbins and Carolyn Clewer dropped by Machines Room and shared ideas about how to show Kniterate’s capabilities to the designer community.

Conclusion? Expect more collaborations and a yarn party (not literally...or maybe?) after this summer!

Talking about collaborations, here’s the second part of our work with DEGEN. Have we said how much we loved working with her? Not enough!

Lindsay, thanks for believing in us and making this possible! #GirlPower  

Discover more of her amazing work at degen.us and babyDEGEN.

China 

Given that the next year includes a big amount of time in China we’ve started looking a small flat for the team. As always, the factory owner is helping us with this. There’s a lot of housing supply in the city and you can rent a three bedroom flat for $500. Always a relief when you come from London.

We will fly back there towards the end of June to implement the changes to improve Kniterate’s speed and start manufacturing.

Surveys

Some of you have asked us when you will be able to choose your scarf color? Should we make it next week? We will share a survey which will include other questions that will help us find the best possible way to communicate with you over the next year.

Thank you!

Thanks to all our backers again, and to our friends and family for supporting us during all this time.

We would also like to thank David Williams from Comfe Designs for taking the time to organize a live interview with us. If you missed it, you can still watch it if you visit Comfe’s facebook page. Like the page and keep up with all things related to the knitting industry.

Love from the Kniterate team.

This is the first look coming out of our collaboration with NYC’s Lindsay Degen aka DEGEN. The tank top and shorts were all made with Kniterate.

Based on an initial sketch (left) DEGEN created a digital image (right) for us to work with. Our custom software turned this into machine instructions. After five hours Kniterate had created the garment pieces. A back panel and front panel fully fashioned and ready to be linked. 

This same process was carried out to create the camouflaged zebra shorts. 

We’d like to thank Lindsay for letting Kniterate be part of her creative process. We’ve had lots of fun working with her over the last days!

Discover more of her amazing work at degen.us and babyDEGEN.

A conversation with Carolyn Clewer

We had the chance to speak with Carolyn Clewer, the Knit Pathway Leader at London College of Fashion. This are her thoughts on Kniterate.

Batch 1 Sold Out! What Now?

We are speechless after all your support, thanks again to all our backers!

We have decided to introduce a second batch of Kniterate machines. The estimated delivery for these will be August 2018.

• $4,799  - 5 units 36% OFF $7,499 RRP (save $2,700)
• $4,899 - 10 units 35% OFF $7,499 RRP (save $2,600)
• $4,999  - 20 units 33% OFF $7,499 RRP (save $2,500)

If we sell out Batch 2 we will be offering pre-orders of Batch 3 at $5,625 (25% OFF $7,499). Estimated delivery November 2018.

Like with our first batch, we are only shipping to the US, Canada, UK and EU. Shipping is paid separately, as is the VAT in the UK and EU, at a time closer to delivery. Read our FAQ for more details.

 Love from the Kniterate team

Let’s party!

Thanks for getting Kniterate this far, we are very excited about the new opportunities that come from raising four times our funding goal. All of this is possible because of you!

This, of course, also means there are less (36!) machines left before our $4,699 batch is over. 

This image shows how we’ve used the six yarn carriers Kniterate has to combine six different colors on each row. Check the video below to see it in action!

Meet the team

We will be doing a Kickstarter Live on Wednesday, April 26. We will guide you through Kniterate and have a Q&A.

Message us with some of the questions in advance so we can better manage our time and answer as many as possible. We will also leave the last 10-20 minutes of the session for an AMA.

What have we been knitting lately

We’ve added videos and pictures on our campaign page over the last days to better illustrate the capabilities of Kniterate.

We are also super excited about our new collaboration with knitwear designer from NYC Lindsay Degen. We are having a great time working with her and are really excited to have her share the work she’s done with Kniterate. ❤️

We will be posting updates on Instagram and Twitter. Follow us if you want to be updated!

What others are saying 

Our advisor Nat Hunter from Machines Room wrote about Kniterate as a tool for makerspaces. Read her post here.

There have also been more articles published about us, all linked in our FAQ. 

Work at Kniterate

We’ve raised four times more than what we needed to get a fully functional Kniterate to your workshop. Now we are in a position to make further improvements to our technology. We’ve taken on board that you want Kniterate to be faster and lighter.

Our community is the best place to start growing the team because you love what we are doing. If you are based in London or Shanghai and are available to travel and work with us, get in touch. We need:

• A full-time Software Engineer to further develop our UI.  
• An Electrical Engineer for a two to four month period project.  
• A Mechanical Engineer for a two to four month period project.

These are positions in which you will be given a great deal of independence. They may also require you to work in a factory in China with the rest of the Kniterate team.

If you would like to do an internship with us this summer, tell us more about you, why you love Kniterate and how you would like to help us.

At Kniterate we value diversity. We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief or sexual orientation.

That’s all for now! It’s been such an amazing period for the company and we are happy to be able to share it with all of you. Thanks for your emails and calls of support!

The Kniterate team

Hey!

It’s already been a week since our campaign started and, as you know, things have been going quite well, and there are still 32 days to go!

Thank you for backing us, writing about us and sharing the project. You’ve helped us to be featured in Martha Stewart, designboom, HYPEBEAST, Core77, The Verge, Huffington Post UK, Make:, Digital Trends and many more places. 

As you can imagine, we’ve been a bit busier than usual but we wanted to take some time to bring some exciting Kniterate news.

Made in the Neighborhood   

We have been reading many messages from people who are looking to join forces with others in their city to get Kniterate. We have also been receiving messages from spaces whose members are asking them for one.

We wanted to make it easy for everyone to organize a way to reach more people and help them pledge for Kniterate. To do this we have created the Made in the Neighborhood program.

 

 

This is our way to centralize your efforts and let everyone know that your city is going to have a Kniterate.

Also, if you are a space that has backed a Kniterate already, consider letting people know that it will be available for them to use.

Get in touch with us to help you out.

Design a Kniterate Scarf Contest

To celebrate this spirit of community we are also starting a design contest. Let’s crowdsource the design of a new scarf!

The winning designer gets the first crowdsourced scarf made with Kniterate.

Upload a two-color design with a size of 96 x 800 pixels and cast your vote here. We can't wait to see your designs.

K-Code

We are publishing the documentation of the K-code, which is a set of low-level instructions for Kniterate to run. Read more about this here.

The easy to use design app that we are working on is able to output this k-code, so you don’t have to worry about anything. It integrates seamlessly with Kniterate.

Kniterate Speed

We want to point out to a typo we made in our FAQ regarding the speed of Kniterate. The current speed is 250 mm/s not 25 mm/s. We have also taken note that an optimized speed is a key priority for many of our backers. We have been working on it for the last days. The video below shows the machine going a bit faster, now it can run at 295 mm/s.

Again, thanks to all our backers for the support shown during the last seven days.

The Kniterate Team

What an incredible start!

We were on the edge of our seats as we saw how the Kniterate community supported us during that first hour, getting us to our funding goal. There were hugs, claps and teary eyes.

We also had a nice little party at Machines Room welcoming our friends and family to see the machine and to celebrate the momentous occasion.

 

We are still hard at work. Thanks for being patient as we answer your questions, not only here, but also on social media and by email. There are more exciting updates coming in the next days. We have a few ideas but we would also love to hear what you would be interested in seeing.  

Maybe how to make a wireless synth tie?

 

 You can read press about us at Make Zine and Tech Styler. 

Thanks to all our supporters, friends, family and journalists. Let’s have a fun 38 days!

The Kniterate Team