The various fiber arts I tried, in order
Knitting
7/10
Knitting is kind of the first fiber art I ever tried (without counting sewing, which I never did much of, except perhaps when I was a teen). It took some getting used to, but once I made a square to practice, I got the hang of it and went to find some nice patterns to make.
The two pictures are shawls I made with a single pattern, one for me and one for my partner's grandma. Except for one unfortunate mistake in the pattern (which made me scratch my head for a good while on my first try), it was quite a smooth process, and I quite like the results.
Appart from those, the only other "project" I have is a cheap kit I bought from a craft store, which was probably made with barely any thought. And this kit has the litteral worst yarn I've ever used, some synthetic, thin, wiggly thing with big fluff balls along the length. I never managed to make more than a few stitches with it. This kit is my worst nemesis.
All in all it's pretty enjoyable, but I never went too far into complicated things : my main issue is that the majority of pattern you find are for clothes, and the majority of those clothes are pretty feminine stuff, which I don't usually wear, so I never end up finding anything I want to make. Still, with the right pattern or for the right reasons (making a gift, maybe?), I would gladly knit again.
Crochet
9/10
I had one little hiccup of a start with crochet : since I was already quite comfortable with knitting, my brain thought, "this is basically the same thing, so I should expect to be just as fast with it". Which absolutely wasn't the case. Then I went back to knitting for a good while (those shawls took a long time, ok!), and then I admitted defeat and started with crochet projects that were made for beginners.
Immediately I saw an improvement, and in the end, I ended up liking crochet more than knitting. It also helped a lot that I could find a lot of amigurumi patterns, so I made quite a few things, including some gifts (notably, the alolan vulpix in the pictures was requested by a friend, to whom I then suggested she tried her hand at crochet too, and now she's the official crochet afficionado in our friend group).
I currently don't have any plan for a new crochet project, mostly because I started getting into the embroidery side of things and because yarn is expensive and storage space is limited, but I do enjoy the process quite a lot, and I would like to tackle bigger projects at some point.
Punch needle
6/10
Chronologically, I tried punch needle inbetween crochet and cross stitch, but I didn't do much of it. The picture is of a kit my brother gifted me for my birthday. It was pretty ok, but I was a bit annoyed because the stabbing would constantly make the fabric lose tension. I might revisit it one day, perhaps with a thinner needle and yarn, but not for now.
Cross stitch
10/10
At the time when I did the punch needle kit, I was officially on my quest to try all fiber arts. So I then found myself a cross stitch kit (the planets one), started it, and prompty abandoned it because I was getting frustrated because the colors were all over the place, and I tried to be too neat.
Then I picked it up again, stopped worrying about the neatness of the back, and basically spent 10 hours a day for a whole week of holidays doing cross stitch.
Once I was finished with the planets, I realized the incredible potential of the craft, since I also love pixel art. So I got some more embroidery floss, did some math to plan a pattern, failed to do the math properly so I ended up with a design three times too big, and spent even more time on Malenia's great rune (the second picture). This one was a bit harder since I used metallic floss (a pain in the ass), but the result was absolutely worth it.
I had heard previously that cross stitch had a reputation of being harder than embroidery, but I found it way easier, mostly thanks to the fact that you have one kind of stitch (two, I guess), and that's it. It's my favorite so far, and I'm currently daydreaming about all the projects I could do while I finish with embroidery.
Embroidery
5/10
Embroidery has always scared me a bit, because it seemed hard, with instructions that are not too precise and leave too much to interpretation. But for the sake of trying (and just in case it was as much as an absolute delight as cross stitch), I got two kits.
I have only done the first one for now, during two craft afternoons with friends (and finishing up while watching videos). It's not exactly as hard as I expected, but I still didn't enjoy it as much as other crafts. I like that it also has a lot of potential, but I don't see myself doing too much of it.
