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So, what's the difference between knitting and crocheting?
When you knit you use two needles. You work the stitches off of one needle on to the other
needle -- in this case, left to right. When you are done with the row you turn around
and go back the other way. I knit using the English method, where I hold the yarn in my
right hand. There's another method called the Continental method where you hold the
yarn in your left hand and pick it up, almost as if you are crocheting. "English" comes
naturally to me. "Continental" is more difficult, but if you're just starting out it's a good
thing to try both of them.
When you crochet, you actually only need one needle. You grab your yarn and you go into
the stitch below and pick up your stitch that way, just keeping that one stitch on the needle.
There is an exception to that and that is Tunisian crochet, which is coming back, and
they hold the stitches on the needle. You actually use a longer crochet hook that looks
like a knitting needle.
With either knitting or crocheting, you can work in the round. If you were knitting, you
would actually use a circular needle to knit. You can go back and forth. You can do lace
patterns with both. You can do cable stitches with both. It's really a lot of possibilities.
One thing to look for when you are looking at patterns, other than garments...this is
actually the beginning of an afghan pattern. I didn't want an afghan. I wanted something
to lay on my piano. So, I reduced the weight of the yarn and reduced the needle significantly
in size and I'm coming up with a much smaller version of that. Anything can be re-tooled,
re-fitted for whatever you're looking to make.
Here's some examples of some crochet work.
I used this verigated yarn and crocheted this scarf in a moss stitch. It looks like I changed
the yarn at the end of every row, but I didn't. It was all the product of the yarn and it
just coincidentally changed at the end of every row for me.
Here's another example of the same stitch, different yarn. It's a little looser. The
yarn was a little thinner, lighter weight.
Here's a scarf that I made using the V stitch in crocheting and I used an extra large hook
for that. It's actually quite open. It's an open weave. I'll show you two more examples
of the same stitch, different yarn.
Here's a green. You can see the open-ness in that as well. And then, yet another yarn.
Same stitch, just a different look.
With knitting, here's a dropped stitch pattern that's really easy to do and works up really
fast. It's diamond shapes and they offset each other from one row to the other. I worked
left to right, left to right on that.
This method is called Entrelac. I love it. It took awhile to figure out how to do it.
There was much frustration, but I got it worked out now. What you do -- it looks like it's
woven, but it's not. What you do is you work each separate square going across, then you
work your way back. And then you do the edge, and you work your way back. This happened
to be 10 rows of 10 stitches, repeated throughout. And then at the edges to change to a half
triangle.
I didn't like the finished edge, so I just took the yarn and a crochet hook and I just
did a single crochet all along the edge to finish it off. It gave it a little better
look.
One of the most popular things in all of knitting are the cable stitches. This is the arm of
a sweater that needs to be attached. You have your cable and you have the ribbing. The ribbing
prevents it from rolling up on you.
And that's the difference between knitting and crocheting.