I would say that knit and gnome are similar in that both words have a silent letter/sound: in knit, you don't read the K sound in the beginning, and in gnome, you don't read the G sound in the beginning. Other than that, I don't really see many similarities between those two words.
When it comes to differences, the obvious one is the meaning - they don't mean the same thing. Also, knit is a verb, whereas gnome is a noun. They are also spelled differently, because they are different words, and so on.
She explained what they were doing and what was happening by issuing nonliving things to describe what they were doing or what was happening
