What is the difference between knitting and crocheting?

Knitting is creating material usually out of yarn, but can really be made out of anything – thread, cotton, plastic, etc. It is a series of horizontal parallel courses of  yarn, which are joined by interlocking loops in which a short loop of one course of yarn is wrapped over the bight of another course.  It can be done by hand or by machine. Hand knitting uses a circular needle, 2 needles, 4 or 5 needles depending on the style.

Typically you cast on a series of loops one one needle and then each loop is the base for creating a loop for the next row. You use the second needle to reach through the loop on the first needle, grab the yarn, and pull it through and capture it on the second needle.  When all of the loops are worked, you turn the work around (over) and start again from the other side if you are working on straight needles (flat work).  Knitting can also be done in the round using either a circular needle or double pointed needles (4 or 5).

Working the loops creates a tube of material.  Another method of “knitting” is using a knitting loom – which is a series of pegs or nails to hold the loops.  The next round of stitches is wound around and then each stitch is worked using a small hook shaped tool.   Machines use a row of needles where the yarn is laid flat over the tops of open needles and then each needle is closed and the yarn is pulled through.  Crocheting is done with a single needle with a hook at the end.

Material is created by creating a chain of loops and then going back into each loop with the hook and pulling through a new loop to create the next row of stitches.  There are many variations on how the new loops are formed from a simple single crochet – pulling one loop through the old loop  until there are two loops on the hook and then pulling another loop through those two loops until a single loop remains on the hook – to double treble – which works through a series of loops 7 times.