Musings on crochet

Before I move home to the States, I'm going to visit my host family up in Osaka. They very generously housed me for 4 months during my semester abroad, and they're fabulous. I've decided to crochet them all hats, which is no small undertaking considering there are ten of them between mom, dad, grandma, my host brother's family, and my host sister's family.

And yet, it's not an unreasonable task. In three days I've already completed five hats. In a mere 16 rounds I can make a whole hat. Try knitting a hat in 16 rounds; the yarn would have to be damn chunky and the needles like tree branches, and it would probably end up looking like a big clunky mess anyway.

Crochet also seems to lend itself to designing at a much earlier experience level than knitting. I've been knitting for years, but I only learned how to crochet back in college when some friends taught me how to make a basic single-crochet beanie, and I didn't expand on that knowledge until after moving to Japan. I consider myself to be at the advanced beginner/kinda-sorta intermediate level, and yet I've already created my own hat pattern which lends itself to several variations. Perhaps this also ties into the time involved: even if you mess up, it doesn't take long to rip it out and recover that lost ground. On the other hand, I have some arm warmers that I've been designing for over a year now just because I can't be bothered to restart them AGAIN.