Surprise Crochet!

I was flipping through a volume of Peach Girl, a manga I read years ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find Momo, the main character, crocheting a cellphone holder for her boyfriend (read right to left):

The translation says "knit," but the same verb is used for knitting and crochet in Japan (it also means "to braid"), so I'm chalking this one up to the translator not knowing what crochet is.  Probably an accurate assumption.  I can't tell you how many times I've had people ask me what I'm knitting, even if I've already told them that I don't knit.

I checked out the anime (which I didn't bother to do when it first came out) to see if this made it into the animated adaptation (since it seriously condenses the story), and it did!

Both the fansubs and the Funimation translation use "knit," which kinda proves my point.  People see yarn and a stick and instantly think "knitting."  But it's a little more irksome in the anime, since it shows Momo's pattern book, which clearly has "how to crochet" instructions...

...and shows her chaining in action:

(Wish I'd thought to make an animated gif before sending back the disc).
The finished product:

 While working on getting the images for this post, I ran into another instance of crochet in an unlikely place.  I was watching The Big Picture, the first film directed by Christopher Guest (whom I like due to his improv movies, i.e. A Mighty Wind), and in a scene towards the end, the main character's agent (played by Martin Short) is crocheting away his stress:

That's one big granny square.
Truth be told, I was a little more surprised to find crochet in an American movie from the 80's than in an manga/anime from the late 90's/early 2000's.  Crochet is very popular in Japan, and is the namesake for amigurumi, crocheted stuffed animals.  In fact, why haven't I seen more crochet in anime?  Granted, I did most of my anime watching before I got into crochet, so it could be that, like the translators for Peach Girl, I saw it and just didn't recognize it for what it was.