Finished the top edge bind-off of the Trinity Stitch shawl. I still have to weave in the yarn ends and block it, though. I'm not sure WHERE to block it, it's so huge.

On some blogs lately there's been discussion of crochet. I used to crochet a lot more, back when I was an undergrad, before I got back into knitting. My maternal grandmother was also a crocheter, she made all kinds of beautiful thread-work (including, in one case, curtains in filet crochet). I did mostly "critters" and a few things like hats, of yarn.

The general 'tude I've seen among knitters (on the knitlist as well as knitters I've talked to in person) is that knitting is art and crochet is kinda junky. Or that knitting is what people with skills do, and crochet is what people do to pass the time while waiting for "One Life to Live" to come on the boob tube at the 'home'.

Even crocheters buy into the stereotype - I can't tell you how many people have seen me knitting and said "Oh, I crochet, but I could never learn to do that" as if two implements rather than one makes the process infinitely harder.

I wince when I hear those attitudes because I think of all the doilies, and all the fancy nightgown yokes, and all the tablecloths out of teeny tiny thread my grandma made. And I think of my own pitiful attempts at thread-crochet, which ended either with my perspiring-from-the-mental-exertion-involved hands dirtied the white thread to the point I couldn't stand to work with it, or when I made mistake #294 and had to rip back yet again, or when I decided I was too nearsighted for such delicate work.

Crochet and knitting are two different processes and are good for doing different things. Think of the difference between watercolor and oil paint - or, maybe better, the difference between cabinetmaking and stoneworking. They are both useful things, but they are used for different situations. You wouldn't want a stoneworked armoire (at least I wouldn't). Crochet - at least, the non-lacy kind - doesn't work so hot for large pieces of clothing because it has a poor drape, and we value drape in clothing. If you want to make sculptural 3-D forms, though, crochet is somehow easier (for me at least) to get it to do what you want it to.

(I designed, totally from scratch, and am now kicking myself for not writing the pattern down as I went, a large doll of Petrouschka when I was a senior in college. It was quite impressive, and it always makes me happy to look at it, because I sat down one day and said "I want to make this" and just totally figured it out - even down to shoes that were actually foot-shaped - in my own head. I don't think I could do that, even now, with knitting).