Miriam is a knitter who crochets. Amy is a crocheter who knits. We both came to crochet first, as children, and we both learned to knit about fourteen years ago. We share an appreciation for the inherent beauty of both knitting and crochet. Miriam loves lace and designs intricate patterns that enthrall knitters with their form and flow. She's designed over two dozen shawls including two published here on Knitty. Amy designs crochet garments that combine fit and wearability with captivating constructions. She has a particular fondness for hats. Amy naturally picks up a hook when she's thinking of designing something new, and Miriam reaches for her needles, but we each enjoy the challenges of both knitting and crochet.

Full Circle

It seems like every time we've met at yarn-y gatherings -- trade shows or fiber festivals -- we've chatted about how we would like to write and design a collection truly combining the best of knitting and crochet. Sure, as a knitter you might know that a crochet hook is good for picking up dropped stitches or putting a stabilizing edging on your work, and crocheters might know that for stretch, nothing beats a knitted ribbing. Many of us have done both for years but haven't thought much about how the two mediums can lean on each other. What we want to do is explore the attributes of both knit and crochet fabric that make them play well together, and then create something new and fun as a result.

In this column, we'll bring our collaborations to life and you get to try your hand at what we discover. Part of the fun of this project has been working as a duo on design -- something that's typically a solitary enterprise. Amy is in Juneau, Alaska, and Miriam is in Salt Lake City, Utah. So, from desert and rainforest, we come together through the magic of Google Hangouts. We dig virtually through our yarn stashes and find what we have in common. We text pictures of swatches to each other, comparing fabric and stitches.

We also pay attention to how knitters and crocheters around the internet have been mixing media. We'll point you to techniques we find where people integrate crochet into their knitting in innovative ways. For instance, Franklin Habit, fellow Knitty columnist with an eye for the unusual and arcane -- and a knitter unafraid to brandish his crochet hook in public -- has been working on a pair of Victorian bathing drawers to bring along on his upcoming nautical knitting cruise. Recently, he posted on his blog from an undisclosed location, and showed us all his leg openings where crochet is playing beautifully with the knitted body of the drawers.

One of the places where crochet shines as a medium is in working small rounds of fabric starting at the center. Using crochet to start the crown of a hat means you don't need to fiddle with multiple needles holding just a handful of stitches. You can start with a tiny chain or just a loop of yarn. Enter the Hybrid Hat. We've created a hat that uses crochet for the crown and knitting for the ribbed sides.

In this hat, if you're new to crochet, you'll become accustomed to working in the round in one of our favorite stitches: single crochet through the back loop (sc-blo -- see image below). Often, crochet is worked in reversible stitches: that means it looks the same from both sides, but it creates a much thicker fabric (similar to garter stitch in knitting). This is where the notion that crochet eats up more yarn than knitting comes from. Some crochet stitches do tend to gobble up yarn, whereas others are pretty equivalent to their knitted cousins. Working in just the back loop of the stitch in the round creates a soft flexible fabric with a clear Right Side and Wrong Side.