I was thinking the other day that it is a strange thing that some knitters find crochet so scary.
Why is it scary?
It hasn't got pointed sticks, like knitting does. It doesn't have hundreds of stitches to drop, it only has one little loop that doesn't drop, and can easily brought back where it ought to be if anything happens to it.
I think it's scary because crochet stitches are deemed to be harder to make out. Exactly where do you put that hook, anyway? It can be very confusing ... knitting was like that too I bet, when it was first learned. We forget that part, forget about knitting ever bringing a sense of fear with it.
Crochet has more stitches to learn than knitting does. All there is to knitting is knit and purl, a binary system that's easily learned, with occasional yarn overs. Crochet has a chain stitch, slip stitch, single crochet, double crochet, treble crochet, cluster stitch ... well, the list goes on. The thing is, you don't have to know it all at once. I made granny squares for ages knowing only how to chain and double crochet.
Crochet is faster than knitting. We all like that. In between my shawl and a pair of socks, I finished the back of my Holey Sweater yesterday.
It's got this weird zig-zag happening, but I like it. The thing that's weird is that it is uninterrupted by my starting a new ball of yarn.
