Crochet or Knitting?

I had to chuckle on reading a comment from a lady who had just received two very nice, and pricey, crochet hooks for a birthday present, and both hooks were the same size!  She was very appreciative, but asked her husband about the two sizes being identical.  "Don't you need two of those things?" he asked, thinking instead of knitting.

Or the people whose spouses ask, "What is it you do again?  Knitting?  Crochet, you say?  What's the difference?"

Crochet and knitting are both methods of looping fibers to make fabric.  Knitting consists of multiple loops on needles, loops that build on each other and are dependent upon each other, while crochet consists of only one loop on one hook at a time; each stitch is complete and independent of the others (in traditional crochet; there are other crochet techniques where that's not the case, but that's for another discussion).  Knitting can be done by hand or machine; there is no machine that can produce crochet.  Because of the nature of the stitches, knitting takes about 1/3 less yarn than crochet (the yarn above is Premier Home Cotton in Water Lilies).

Which is better?  Which is easier to learn?  Which do most people like to do?  These questions go round and round.  Crochet and knitting are about equal in difficulty to learn, and whichever a person learns first, he or she tends to think the other is more difficult.  But either is easy to start learning, and I can teach you both!

In the above picture, which is knitting and which is crochet?  If you don't know, come to class on Mondays at 10 a.m. and find out!

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