As a fan of professional wrestling anytime it comes up with a NON-fan they almost always ask “You do know it’s fake?”
I’ll bring it back on myself. I don’t play video games and have no current knowledge of them. (To the point I’m not even sure if video games is the right term for them.) So the following conversation is possible.
NORMAL PERSON: I’ve been playing Tears of the Kingdom.
CLUELESS ME: What is that?
NORMAL PERSON: It’s a new video game.
CLUELESS ME: Is it like Tetris?
Just last night, a friend of mine who works in a state university talked about working on the jig-saw puzzle her boss had bought for her department. Later, she mentioned that they discovered a million unspent dollars in some budget category that they had to figure out how to spend. Some stereotypes have a lot of truth to them.
I’m not really familiar with the terminology, but maybe you could call it “strategy- and roleplay-based tabletop board games”? Or something else more descriptive than “board games”. It’s silly to get annoyed when people immediately think of the quintessential board game when you say “board game”.
The word I’ve heard for it is Eurogaming. I know many Eurogamers and occasionally do it myself, but I prefer conversation instead of gaming, so I’m usually pushed into these things by social pressure. I do enjoy it, but I prefer getting to know people far more.
It’s just funny to think of people not knowing what that is because the people around me do it all the time.
But this is a totally inapplicable analogy - there are many, many new video games that are very mainstream - how many new board games are mainstream? Games that that at least 20% (and that’s a low number) of the population will have played or at least seen advertised or heard discussed?
Having niche hobbies mean people have less knowledge base and far shallower knowledge of the topic, and it’s reasonable that that’s case. Doesn’t mean it can’t bug you, but there is nothing at all even remotely unreasonable about the people asking.
I call all that stuff “needlework”. (That’s what my grandma called it. Maybe it’s a regional thing.)
Usually people assume anything with a needle must be knitting (at least my college roommate had that misconception which he expressed every time I crocheted)
I enjoy lifting weights, and have done so twice a week or so, as time permitted, for the last thirty years. I have increased in size. The perception big people are dumb, or that they all use anabolic steroids to grow (which I would never recommend) are widespread and slightly annoying, but it’s not like I lose sleep over them.
I mean they both use yarn connected together to make a fabric using a different tool set and results in a bit of a different look. Is it that big of a deal? Are the practitioners vehemently one or the other?
If you take a look at the title of the OP…
Yes, innocent but after the millionth time, kinda annoying.
Knitters are dangerous, man. Madame Defarge was a knitter. Us crocheters are peace-loving
I think of “needlework” as being embroidery, but I think that’s just me.
Not just you. I do too – also cross stitch. But hand quilting and some kinds of lace making could be included. I’ve done many of these, still do some. Knitting needles are not actually needles.
That drives me nuts too. It doesn’t even take that much effort - a trip to Michaels is all the research you need.
OTOH, in the Addams Family TV series, Morticia is actually knitting, not just holding on to the needles.
Isn’t that “needlepoint”?
“Well, I do live within 2500 miles of him…”
.
(Similar, and similarly not a profession)
I’ve got a last name that’s, well, unique. So people will ask “Feltschavetta? You must be related to Alfie Feltschavetta!”
“Well, we both come from the same tiny village in a dead-end valley in the Alps. If you go back twelve generations…”
but crochety.
Needlework is a catch all term for textile crafts.
Needlepoint is a type of needlework done on canvas that has large holes and the yarn covers the entire canvas.
In contrast, embroidery and cross stitch leave large portions of the base material exposed.
Source - been needlepointing all my life, worked for Michaels and I have a used craft book store on etsy (for now)
It’s a term used in the UK as well.