I was out webwalking again and came upon this:



It's a report of a bit of performance art/industrial control/knitting that boggles the mind. The artist is directing the production of a knit US flag, using aluminum street light poles as needles and giant strips of felt for yarn. The actual knitting was performed by two John Deere excavators, handled with amazing delicacy and precision. The image is from a story on iBerkshires.com, reporting about the event which took place at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artist in question is David Cole. This isn't the first exploration of knitting (giant or human scale) he's done. He's also done a previous bit of oversize knitting with construction machinery, working up fiberglass insulation into a giant slouchy teddy bear. His other works can be seen at his website.

I can't say that the gauge of the flag was in fact 1 st=3 feet, but one has to admit that it's pretty huge. I'm especially boggled at the thought of someone deconstructing the movements to produce a knitting stitch, then reproducing that series behavior using the controls of the excavators. I'd love to applaud not only Mr. Cole (for his imagination in thinking up this concept), but also the equipment operators. "Knit a flag" is an incredible thing to put on one's equipment resume, and is quite a testament to their skill.