It was amazing to do something out of the norm with Shu from Momshoo! Shu knits and embroiders since a young age and continues on with her mom to create this lovely business! You may read her bio to find out more about Shu!
Momshoo is a mother-and-daughter craft duo that works with traditional techniques of embroidery, hand-sewing and knitting. We design whimsical lifestyle products including pouches, home décor items and brooches. Momshoo is all about handmade items that are unique and personal, very much like a home-made gift from a friend.
Since 2014, we have also been holding workshops for participants to enjoy crafting with us stitch by stitch.
Read more about Momshoo here.
And finally we are going to give you a revelation on the long time question on how crochet and knitting looks and feels different despite both using a needle-like tool and yarns! We have discussed about the differences between crochet and knitting in this post. Below, we will be concentrating on sharing our experiences trying to crochet and knit using the same knitted amigurumi pattern, the results, and how I modified the knitted pattern to suit the crochet version of the amigurumi.
Watch to find out more about our mini ‘race’!
First and foremost, Shu is very nice to provide her knitted seal amigurumi pattern as the basis of the experiment. Shu explained how to read the knitting pattern and I realised that it’s pretty similar to the crochet version. We decided to crochet the knitting pattern as it is. I have never tried a knitting pattern before and I was curious with the outcome.
So, on we go, crocheting and knitting. I was shocked at the number of needles Shu has to put on her knitted piece, but it isn’t that complicated if you actually understood what she is trying to do. She didn’t even need to keep track of her number of stitches as each knitting needle already serves as a stitch marker. I’m kind of jealous because of that as I have to constantly ensure that I don’t miss a stitch to create the perfect shape.
Before we reached halfway through the piece, I already had a bad intuition that my seal would look odd. That’s because the knitting pattern requires me to maintain almost every other round. Usually for crochet patterns that have a round shape, I just have to keep increasing to a certain size before maintaining the rounds.
And so my piece grew longer and longer and I couldn’t take it any more, but I continued to persevere on because I want to do an actual comparison based on the same pattern. Shu’s seal was looking good as it’s nice and round. It is very stretchy too!
Finally, we could stuff our stuffing in. Judging on her pattern, we should be stuffing when there’s only 9 stitches left in the round. But it is simply crazy! 9 stitches in the round is too small for me to fit anything through, not even the tweezers helped. I’ll usually stuff my amigurumi when it was 18 stitches wide. So I was looking at Shu, happily stuffing her seal to be fat and nice, while I have to remove my stitches to stuff.
I realised that knitters will usually use a tweezer to stuff the stuffing in. However, I’ll use the back of my crochet hook to stuff as there is a wide enough area to do so.
Lastly, we sew up the ends and weave in the tail. This step remains the same.
So we compared our seals side by side. My seal was hideous because it ended up being soooo long. My seal was also way stiffer than her knitted seal. Hers is really nice to squeeze and stretchy. Even though we used the same yarn (Puppy Yarn by Tiny Rabbit Hole), the touch of it is so different because crochet has the capability to produce really tight stitches. Whereas the knitted seal is softer and less tensed. Some stuffing also shows through due to the stretchiness of knitting. Nevertheless, be it crocheted or knitted, each amigurumi gives a very unique look and both are kawaii!
After comparing at all the differences, we decided to frog our pieces. :O
Shocking!
Length of yarn used
Crochet: 11.2m
Knitting: 4.95m
Difference: 6.25m
I’ve used more than double of the yarn for the same pattern!
I began crocheting the second time, this time removing all the maintaining rounds as much as possible. The shape looks right now. The number of rounds for the body had been reduced by 7 rounds. My crocheted piece is around the same size as the knitted piece now. Immediately after that, I frogged everything.
Length of yarn used
Crochet: 8.5m
Knitting: 4.95m
Difference: 3.55m
Still longer but slightly less than double.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to save yarns, then knitting might be the way to go? Haha!
Be it crocheted or knitted, both techniques create very different results in terms of looks, tension and touch. Both are adorable in their own ways! It is totally up to your own personal preference on which technique you would like to use. We actually took about the same time to complete the body.
Are you convinced with our experiment and mini ‘race’? Comment below to tell us what you hope to see!
Mata ne~
