Knook review

I received a Knook kit for Christmas this year. This is a way to knit with a crochet hook; the hook has a hole through it near the foot, you thread a cord through that hole, and the cord acts as your left needle. To start, you chain as usual for crochet, but then yarn wrapping and hook insertion change to methods standard for knitting rather than crochet.

I made an entire project with the Knook, the Circle of Love Mini-Cloth. The included Knook instructions only tell you how to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off, not how to slip stitches, increase, or decrease, so the patterns you can make are somewhat limited. Fortunately there is a large community of people designing simple squares for knitting, to use as washrags and so forth – two others I really liked showed a bat and a squirrel.

You can see blocking couldn’t cover up the tension change that happened as I proceeded.

Verdict? The Knook is good at what it does. The instructions are clear, the methods are pretty easy, the materials are good quality, and it really is knitting. However, I doubt I will ever use it again. I was faster at knitting when I was stumbling along with two needles and no real idea what I was doing. On the other hand, I believe that if I do try knitting again, I will be far better at it having used the Knook. I think it helped me understand how knitting works.

In sum, I would recommend the Knook as a gateway to actual knitting, a lesson allowing you to learn the motions of knitting and purling separate from the management of knitting needles. If you want to knit much of anything, however, I would say buck up and learn to do it the usual way.