Knit vs. Crochet, the world cup final

[firecat]

Last night, my sweetie kyubi and I were discussing making fabric using yarn and sticks, including the fact that a lot of people either knit or crochet but don't do both.

Therefore, I want to ask a bunch of questions. Answer as many or as few as you like, or whatever else you feel like talking about.

Do you knit and/or crochet?

If you do both, do you prefer one or the other?
Why?

Is one harder than the other for you?

What was it like learning knitting and/or crochet?

If you do one but not the other, have you tried to learn the other?
Why or why not?

Do you feel like one or the other (or the products thereof) is "cooler"/more hip/more fashionable? Why or why not? (This isn't about what you think rationally but what you feel.)

Have you encountered people who do one looking down on people who do the other? What's that about?

I'll give my answers in a separate post.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I crocheted as a child and enjoyed it, but (like a lot of my childhood pastimes) it didn't "stick."

I came to knitting about a year ago, inspired (oddly, perhaps) by someone who crochets and sent me to a yarn store to fondle yarn.

I chose knitting because I prefer the fabric it produces; I'm interested in knitting garments, and on looking at the patterns available, knitting seemed more versatile. As it turns out, knitting has prompted me to pick up the crochet hook again, because crochet is a great way to make edgings, etc. for knit pieces.

Plus somebody gave me a whole bunch of knitting needles. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

Knitting is certainly trendy right now, driven by the marketing of books like Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'n' Bitch. But that kind of thing comes and goes, and I'd be surprised to see a fraction of today's new knitters still at five years from now. And Stoller's announced plans for a book on crochet, so who knows ... Craft trends tend to have a 2-3 year life cycle, in my experience. (Anybody remember rubber stamping?)

Snobbery? When it's there, it's probably just the old human impulse to make What I Do better/more important/cooler than What You Do. I haven't seen much of it re knitting vs. crochet, but I've seen some snarkiness over things like choice of yarn or English vs. Continental knitting. See above paragraph.