It’s finally snowy and cold here in NYC, so I took advantage of the weather last night and stayed in to re-learn how to knit.

I’m a great lover of crochet, but I’ve known how to knit since college, when my friend Mike Topper taught me how while we were working at the Half-Ass (Halfway Inn) in Ann Arbor. Before last night, it had been at least five years since I’d last picked up my sticks, but, thanks to the knitting mysteries and romances I’ve been reading lately (don’t judge—they’re surprisingly decent popcorn reading), I suddenly found myself with the itch to try again. Like most Americans, I’d originally learned to knit using the English method, but, upon consulting my copy of Stitch ‘N Bitch, I noticed that the yarn hold in the Continental method looked a lot like the yarn hold I was used to in crochet. I tried it out, and everything just clicked. Now, I only wish that someone had told me earlier that knowing my way around a crochet hook would make Continental knitting a breeze!