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Last month I took my car for its annual state inspection. Since the wait tends to be long, I brought some crocheting to keep me busy.

An older gentleman sat next to me and asked what I was making. I showed him, and he smiled and said his wife used to knit all the time. With a faraway look, he began talking about the afghans and sweaters his wife used to knit. I began to get the impression his wife had recently passed away and thus didn't have the heart to correct him.

Does something like this happen to y'all? Like you're sewing and someone thinks you're quilting, or you're embroidering and someone thinks you're cross-stitching, etc?

i usually crochet, ive given up correcting most people. its too much effort.

One of my guy friends from high school did that all the time. I was always beating up on him for the stupid stuff he'd say, so I told him that if I was knitting, I'd stab him, and if I was crocheting, I'd pull his brain out through his nose.

He didn't have a problem after that.

For the most part I've learned to smile and nod when this happens (which is often) unless either the person seems really enthusiastic and is asking questions about the pattern, or it's someone I know well and they've made the mistake several times.
Cool to find out the terms in Hebrew- the Japanese to knit is amu, but I've never run across the verb to crochet...

I'm guessing that if this gentleman's wife knit as much as he says she did he probably knows the difference between knitting and crochet. However, people who don't actually practice fiber arts don't really understand that the two are fundamentally different. They just see someone using a needle or hook and string. So, seeing one will make them think of the other.

I don't think I'm making any sense. In summary, he probably knows the difference, but since he's not actually a knitter/crocheter the two seem very closely related. Therefore, seeing one leads to thoughts of the other.

it happens all the time. sometimes i'll be sitting there, crocheting a stuffed animal and people will stop and ask "oh, what are you knitting?", but that's not as bad as when people don't even know what crocheting is lol.

The word Crochet, is French for "Hook". So when we say Crochet Hook, we are literally saying, hook hook. However, Crochet is one of those funny verb/noun words. Like run in English. It's a verb that acts like a noun.

People confusing crafts, yes. Especially when you do three or four differnt crafts that pretty much look the same. (crochet, knit, cro-hook, tsunian, crochenit ect.) One time, I was doing some cro-hooking, and a 98 year old blind woman, who was once an excellent knitter, asked to do a stitch. I consented, and handed it over to her. She thought I was knitting, but when she found out that I was cro-hooking, she exclaimed, "darn you, your crocheting." then she thrusted it back at me. Funny Huh?
I have also had some people who were actually curious to the differnce. So I told them this, knitting is two needles, and you gernerally have the same number of stitches (loops on the needles) at all times. While Crochet is one hook and usually one loop at a time. Strange how people think there is no differnce when there is a world of differnce.

I don't know about any of you, but my favorite kind of afghan to make are the ones where you make squares or pieces and then sew them together.

All the time.
Once my friend and I were demonstrating at the fair in my state and we were crocheting. My friend made this big sign that she put up beside us that said "It's Crocheting, not knitting!" And only one person asked what it was. My friend just pointed at the sign and it was all good. :]