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Today I decided it was time to learn something new. I’d been hearing about something called “knooking” for a while, and I had picked up a beginner’s kit at Michaels over the holidays (I found it on the craft books display, not in the yarn department).

(I forgot to take a picture before diving in to try it – you’ll see the missing hook and cord in the next picture ^_-)

Before I started, I consulted various videos and blogs on the subject, so I was going in with several different techniques in mind.

My goal: a stockinette swatch with a garter stitch border. This is how far I got:

It’s important to understand that even though you use a crochet hook, this is actually real knitting. It’s not an immitation like Tunisian knit stitch, or slip stitch crochet; it’s knitting. The cord holds the stitches (and acts like the left knitting needle), while you use the hook to work the stitches (which acts like the right knitting needle).

It seems like the entire point of knooking is that it makes it easier for crocheters to knit. It’s hard to say for sure with just this little swatch (so look for further blog posts about it!), but so far I’ve found that while it makes the knit stitch easier (and more familiar!) to a crocheter, it makes the purl stitch ridiculously harder than with needles.

I followed the instructions in the book (at least, I think I did…), and the purl stitches ended up twisted (which is why the first few rows of V’s look kind of wonky). So I followed the instructions I found in a video and that worked much better – by which I mean, the stitches looked right. It was a huge pain to do it that way, though. (And that last sentence is now nominated for the Understatement Of The Year award.)

The up side? If you are a crocheter and have always wanted a Doctor Who scarf, you can now easily make one using this technique. That scarf uses only knit stitches, and knit stitches, as I said above, are very, very easy with knooking.

One last thing: the knooks are crochet hooks with a hole in the end that you can feed a cord through. If you can’t find a knook, or can’t afford to buy more tools, you could easily use a long cabled tunisian hook with the stopper removed , or a locker hook instead.

ETA: I just tried a different way to knit and purl that made the purl stitch a lot easier and make the knit stitch a little harder. The real problem seems to be that the stitches I’m working into have a tendency to shrink on me. I’m not sure what would cause that – I’m still investigating.