Many people ask me which craft is easier to learn, knitting or crochet. If I had anyone to teach me when I was a child, I think I would have started with crochet.

What is crochet?

Crochet uses just one tool ‘the hook’ which is held in the dominant hand. Almost all crochet starts with a slip knot and involves interlocking loops of yarn to create a fabric.

With Crochet (the exception is Tunisian Crochet) there is usually only one loop on the hook at the start and end of each stitch which can easily be secured using a stitch marker when the project is stored.

What is knitting?

Knitting requires the user to manipulate a pair of needles held in each hand and after ‘casting on’ a predetermined number of stitches, the work continues by transferring a long line of stitches from one needle to the other. The downside of this is that there is a risk of dropping these stitches from the needles when transporting or storing the project. This can lead to many an hour picking up stitches!

I was taught to knit by my dad when I was a young child and I remember finding it a bit tricky at the start, but I was determined to be as good at knitting as my Mum, who was so quick at producing many fabulous, knitted garments for us kids and for herself. You are probably wondering why my dad taught me when my mum was such a talented knitter and the simple answer is that my dad just had more patience (sorry Mum)! Joking aside, I get my creative juices from my dad’s side of the family. My granny was very keen on tapestry and so was my dad. Between them they must have done hundreds of tapestries which have been used for cushions, seat pads, stool covers or just as wall hangings. Aunty Diana taught textiles at university and her preferred craft was needle felting. Aunty Penny taught textiles at a school and enjoined many different disciplines, from dressmaking to painting. Her passion in recent years is for watercolour and she is extremely talented in this area.

As a person who learned to knit first, there were 2 main difficulties I had when I started crocheting and these were ‘tension’ and ‘identifying the stitch’. To be a good crocheter it is imperative that you maintain a good tension in your work. This is usually achieved by wrapping the working yarn around the fingers of the non-dominant hand which isn’t holding the hook. It takes a lot of practice to achieve a constant tension and the crocheter will eventually find what works for them with plenty of practice and trial and error. As a knitter, I had been used to knowing exactly where my stitches were as they were always stored on the needles. With crochet you need to be able to identify the stitch, so you know where to place the hook. I struggled with this until someone showed me how to be sure I knew which was the stitch. I learned how to turn my work to view the ‘v’s’ on the top and I knew I had to work under these two loops to be in the correct place for the next stitch.

Armed with these two problems solved I was away and have never looked back, that is until I decided to help my fellow crocheters!

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