Feature Friday: Playing knooky!

I'd heard of knooking before.  I even went looking for a knooking hook, with no success.  I didn't really know how it was done, though. 

Knooking is knitting with a crochet hook that has a cord attached to its end.  I've attempted knitting a few times and never really got into it.  I like the effects of knitting, but my tension always ends up screwy and it looks a mess.  I'm sure I could figure it out, but I just don't enjoy the process enough to make the effort.  I much prefer the control and convenience of using a hook.

Recently, I visited one of my favorite craft blogs and found this post.  That lead me to this Knooking site.  In checking out the posts, I found some excellent little videos demonstrating how to do it.  It looked so simple!  I just had to give it a try.

Going through my hooks, the smallest, straight sided hook I found was a 5mm metal one.  I ended up taping a cord (just a long strand of Handicrafter cotton) to make my knooking hook.  Here is my very first attempt at knooking.



The yarn is just some left over Handicrafter cotton I had lying around.  The hook was a bit big for the size of yarn, but that wasn't much of a problem. 

I absolutely loved knooking!  It was really quite easy and felt natural to my crocheting hands.  Even working the purl stitches wasn't that difficult - and actually quite a bit easier with a hook than doing them with needles.

One of the advantages knitting has over crochet is that it uses less yarn, and the resulting fabrics are lighter and more flexible, making it ideal for clothing items.  For someone like me who finds manipulating the needles more frustrating than it's worth, knooking is the perfect answer.  As an added bonus, because the second needle is replaced with a cord, dropping stitches is virtually impossible.

The set up I've got with the yarn taped to the hook isn't ideal, but it's more than adequate for small projects like face cloths, small bags, dish cloths and the like.  If I ever wanted to go all out and make a sweater, I'd want to either find a commercial knook or make my own from a wooden or plastic hook, and use something different for the cord, like some of the smooth cords sold for jewelry making.

I've got a few projects I need to finish first, but once I do, I'm going to experiment with knooking some more, and see about doing textured patterns, increases and decreases with the knook.

Playing knooky is fun!