Crochet is a French word that means “to hook.” That’s because you use a hook and yarn to make textiles, bags, dolls, and anything else your brain can imagine.

Crochet is very different from knitting, both in the types of stitches and types of tools, but they are often mistaken for each other because they are both forms of fiber art.

The most primitive form of fiber art is known as nalbinding, in which a person uses a needle and yarn to create textiles through creating a series of loops and passing the yarn through the loops.

Crochet and knitting both evolved from nalbinding, but with notable differences. Crochet closes the loop with each stitch and only uses one instrument for the process– a crochet hook. Knitting uses a pair of knitting needles (non-hooked instruments) and keeps each loop open until the entire textile is finished.

There is also Tunisian Crochet, which combines crochet and knitting in an interesting and difficult manner. It requires a crochet hook that is approximately the size of a knitting needle (which is several inches longer than a typical crochet hook) and, of course, yarn. With Tunisian crochet, you are still finishing off a stitch before moving onto another stitch, but instead of the stitches being one column each within one row (like it is with crochet), in Tunisian crochet, one stitch is the entirety of the columns within one row.

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