3KCBWDAY7: How Do You Balance Different Crafts Like Knitting and Crochet?

3KCBWDAY7 - Today is the last day of the 3rd Annual Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 7.

"Crafting Balance - Are you a knitter or a crocheter, or are you a bit of both? If you are monogamous in your yarn-based crafting, is it because you do not enjoy the other craft or have you simply never given yourself the push to learn it? Is it because the items that you best enjoy crafting are more suited to the needles or the hook? Do you plan on ever trying to take up and fully learn the other craft? If you are equally comfortable knitting as you are crocheting, how do you balance both crafts? Do you always have projects of each on the go, or do you go through periods of favoring one over the other? How did you come to learn and love your craft(s)?"

I'm primarily a knitter, but enjoy a bit of crochet now and then.  I generally use crochet to do my household items, but on occasion do some household knitting. 

    Again, as the free spirit that I tend to be when it comes to my crafts, I do whichever craft inspires me to pick up at the moment.  Since I do other fiber / fabric crafts also it might be one of those instead. 

    I was taught to crochet by my mum when I was very small - that was when she only had myself, my #1 sister & my #1 brother to care for and had the time.  She never got the time to teach me to knit - there were #2 & #3 sisters and #2 & #3 brothers along later and you all know where her time was spent :~).

    My great-grandmother, noting that I wanted to learn the skill of knitting, gave me a booklet (one of those green ones by Coats & Clark, I think: How to knit, crochet & tat).  I taught myself to knit from that book - and to tat, too, for that matter - I used the crochet part as a refresher when I needed it.  However, on the sort of funny side, I ended up being a continental knitter as I LOOKED at the pictures and FIGURED how to make the yarn do what the pictures showed, and since I am "severly right-handed" used my right hand to manipulate the needles and put the yarn in my left.  I am also a very left-brained person and decided to figure how to make the least possible motions in the knitting - hence I ended up a "non-thrower".

    I have a LARGE love affair with all things fiber / yarn / fabric and have been engaged in that affair since I was a small girl (that's nearly 60 years now) and I do not plan on stopping anytime soon!