For Shame!

Wow. Shame on me for letting this thing get away from me. Has it been three months already?

Oops.

I've been busy. Holidays, work, and E starting up the academy again have all gotten in the way. I promise not to let such things come between us again. Friends?

Friends.

In the interim, I have taught myself to knit after 10 years of just crocheting. I have crossed over to the dark side, bitten the bullet, grinned and beared it. It wasn't as complicated as I thought. In fact, I love it. That's not to say I'm hanging up my hooks. I have found a lot of similarities and differences between the two, which means that each has its strong suits, each has its limitations.

Five Things I Have Learned About Knitting as Compared to Crochet:

1) Things That Are Knit are WAY way way more stretchy in all directions than Things That are Crocheted. This makes knits more practical for things that you wear on your body, especially if your body is curve-a-licious like mine. (Rawr.)

2) Conversely, Things That Are Knit are not as stiff and do not stand up on their own as well as Things That Are Crocheted. This is why crochet will always be and forever-more my only choice for toys, dolls, animals, amigurumi in general.

3) Hats knit in the round are made from the bottom up, starting with the exact circumference you need to end up with around your head, and then decreasing. (Of course they can be made from the top down, too.) What a paradigm shift from the top down, increasing as you go method of crochet hats! Very fun to do things "backwards" once in a while. As such, I am still obsessed with making knit hats on my amazing addi circulars, and probably will be for a while.

4) There are so many other knitty things that I have yet to try... intarsia, cables, baubles, lace, ruffles, ridges. I feel like I have mastered everything there is to know about crochet, plus invented some of my own techniques and patterns.

and last but possibly coolest,

5) Knitting is way way WAY older and, consequently, has its own made up words (purl, stockinette, intarsia) that you just don't find in crochet. It simply hasn't been around long enough to build its own jargon (single crochet, double crochet, triple crochet, half double crochet. You get the picture).

Not to disparage crochet. On the contrary, learning to knit has really helped me appreciate the finer points of crochet and overlook its shortcomings.

It's like I have found the Yin to my Yang.

Or Yang to my Yin.

Or something.

You know what I mean. Don't look at me like that.