[sergioisidoro]

The thing knitting taught me is that you can have something beautiful and useful even tho literally every part of the piece is a single point of failure.

No redundancy, no backstop. If any of the stitches gets cut, the entire piece can unravel completely.

We're so used to redundancy, but sometimes you just need to get things done, and it's ok if it's all a deck of cards.

[bregma]

It depends on your medium. A good wool has little hooks along the shaft of its staple so once knit the yarn will cling. Cutting a single stitch will not cause a loss of coherency. In fact, a classic knitting technique for crafting something like a cardigan made with wool involves knitting in the round (making a spiral tube, essentially) and then slicing it open for the button band and sleeves. It's called "steeking".

[n4r9]

> it's ok if it's all a deck of cards

The idiom you're looking for may be "house of cards": https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/house+of+cards

[croisillon]

after that comment i hope he gets his deck in order

[lukaslalinsky]

Knitting is actually very nicely repairable. Home made sweaters were super popular here in the past, pretty much the only affordable way to get them. They survived for many many years, because you can always patch them, either visibly or invisibly. Even knitted socks, which get a lot of abuse, were patched and repatched.

[al_borland]

When I visited Sweden I stumbled across nålebinding. It predates knitting and crochet, and from what I read, it didn’t suffer from this issue of unraveling. Though I think that is a double edged sword, as it also means it’s hard to go back and fix a mistake if one is made.

[kzrdude]

At least the yarn has more han one strand. It's redundant at some level :)