Knit Today team blog

While some knitters look at crochet patterns as a foreign language only understood by a certain group of people who choose hooks over needles, there are actually quite a few Knit Today readers who have sent us pictures of both knitting and crochet projects they’ve made. But just how easy is it to get into a completely different way of working with yarn? And is there room in knitters’ hearts to fall in love with dcs and trs as well as Ks and Ps?

I asked myself these questions because I recently saw a pattern I love the look of, but it’s in crochet. After some deliberation, I decided it was time I expanded my knitting horizons and take up the hook. Here’s what I learned:

For your first crochet project, choose something that only uses a couple of stitches in addition to chains (such as double crochet and treble crochet). Keep a step-by-step instruction sheet nearby on how many times you have to loop the yarn over the hook and pull it through loops on the hook to make each stitch, so you don’t have to keep looking it up.
Working a stitch into a previous crochet row is incredibly easy – as with knitting, find the “v” shape and insert the hook under it completely to build your new stitch on top.
Because you’re only dealing with one stitch at a time, it’s important to count them at the end of a row to make sure you haven’t left one out – believe me, you’ll notice the shape change immediately if you continue on the wrong number of stitches.
When you put your project down for the night, put your last stitch on a safety pin so you don’t lose it.

Here’s what I’ve made so far on my project – it doesn’t look like much, but it at least looks like the picture!