Making Small Gauge Crochet Hooks More Comfortable

Have you ever tried to crochet something using very fine yarn or thread which necessitated the use of small crochet hooks? If so, did you ever find that your hands cramped up quite badly while you were doing it?

I've certainly noticed that when I'm using a smaller gauge hook (like about a 4mm hook or below) my hands get very sore and I have to stop after a short time. It didn't happen to me with the larger gauge hooks so I figured if I had some way of making the handles a bit thicker it would go a long way towards making the small hooks more comfortable to work with. Now you can buy hooks with large size grips. Off the top of my head Prym, Addi and Clover are three brands that I can think of  who do hooks with handles. However, I already have a set of crochet hooks which work perfectly well, and I didn't fancy forking out a load of money buying more hooks with grips, because some of them aren't exactly cheap. 

I had a look on the likes of Amazon and there were grips that you could add on to your hooks, but most of them were kind of ugly and just not what I was looking for. I had considered using Fimo as I had used it a lot in my teens and knew it would be sturdy, however it needs to go in the oven to cure and I was concerned that the hooks might not react well to being cooked.

At Christmas, one of the presents I got from my husband and son was Sugru. It's like a very hardwearing version of Fimo, and it's intended use is for fixing and general life hackery as opposed to arts and crafts. Most importantly, it doesn't require cooking to cure - it hardens in 24 hours and is ready to use! They got me the multi pack, so I got some black, white, blue, yellow and red Sugru. You can mix colours too, so you can really have any colour you want - you can see in the picture that I've got a green and a purple.

The hooks I used the Sugru on were the 4.5mm, 4mm, 3.5mm, 2.5mm and 2mm hooks. For the 4.5, 4 and 3.5 hooks I used one sachet of Sugru on each, and two sachets on each of the other two hooks, the reason being that the bigger hooks didn't need as much bulking out in the handles as the smaller ones did. I also found that the handles of the very thin hooks were a bit bendy and flimsy, so the extra-thick coating of Sugru helped reinforce them.

When putting the Sugru around the hooks, I basically made a 'sausage' and held it up against the handle until I had the length I wanted, then I pressed the hook into the 'sausage' rolled it back and forth in my hands until it was wrapped evenly around the handle. I used my nail to smooth it down around the top and bottom so that it looked neater, and then, while the Sugru was still soft, I got a tapestry needle (anything pointy would do) and carved the hook size into the Sugru. This was because with the steel hooks the size is usually printed or stamped into the centre of the handle, and in this case I'd just covered it up with the Sugru. It says in the instructions to leave it for 24 hours to set, so once I'd done that, I just took some nail varnish and dabbed it in to where I'd carved in the hook size so that it would be easier to read at a glance.

I have to say that since doing this I've noticed a huge improvement in the comfort level of the hooks - I'm not getting cramps in my hands at all now, so I'm delighted! I've started a new project recently using fine crochet thread and it would have been pretty much impossible for me to work on for longer than a few minutes with just the plain hooks, however I've spent lots of time happily crocheting away in front of the TV so hopefully I'll be finished it before too long and I'll be posting some pictures of it up on here!


Hooks from: Home Focus at Hickeys (part of an 18 piece set)
Sugru from: my lovely hubby and son, who bought it at Sugru.com

Amigurumi Unicorn

 

Hello again all! Today's blog is about this adorable little critter; the Amigurumi Unicorn. No prizes for guessing who I made this for :-) My little man loves the Despicable Me movies, and we saw a toy of Agnes's fluffy unicorn in the toy shop but it was giant and pink, which I thought might be a bit weird for a two year old boy. So I had a search online and found a pattern on Ravelry - incidentally, if you're into yarn related crafts and haven't already checked out Ravelry.com, you really should because there are tonnes of free patterns and some of the pattern creators have YouTube channels and have put up tutorials so you can knit/crochet along.

Now the pattern I used suggests 'Light Weight' yarn, (double knit weight is used in the video tutorial) and a 3.5mm hook. I wanted the toy to be a little bit bigger so I used chunky yarn and a 4.5mm hook. It also suggests 12mm safety eyes, but I only 9mm and it was around midnight when I realised I needed a different size so I just had to make do with the 9mm eyes. (Unfortunately my local 24 hour Tesco doesn't stock knitting supplies, which is just as well because I'd probably never leave otherwise) I think the 9mm eyes look fine though. 

Aside from the yarn weight, hook size and eye size, I did deviate from the pattern slightly in some other ways, also. On the pattern it doesn't say to stuff the hooves, or feet, or whatever you want to call them. However, since mine were larger I felt they needed a bit of bulk so I put a very small amount of stuffing in just before I worked the tube of the leg. I didn't stuff them firmly or anything, like you would for the head and body, I just put enough in so that they wouldn't collapse in on themselves. If you are making this and decide that you want to stuff the feet, I'd recommend putting in your stuffing before you crochet the narrow leg tube because it can be a bit awkward trying to push the stuffing down through the legs.

                        

For the mane and tail the pattern suggests using the contrast colour (the yarn you used for the hooves and mouth) and making the mane using chain stitches. I thought I'd make the unicorn a bit more colourful though, and I cut segments of rainbow coloured yarn and chained it with the blue to make the mane. Then for the tail I mixed the strands of yarn and plaited it, as the pattern suggested.

                             

I did use double knit weight yarn for the horn (and a 3.5mm hook) because when I first made it with the chunky yarn it came out huge and I didn't like how it looked, so I went with the lighter weight yarn. I didn't follow the pattern exactly when it came to crocheting the horn, I left out a couple of rounds so it's a bit 'stubbier' than the pattern would have it and rather than working a small bit of stuffing inside it before I attached it to the head, I just left the long tail from the starting magic loop, and tucked the excess yarn inside instead.

This was a nice simple toy to make, the pattern is good and very easy to follow. There is also a YouTube video where the designer makes the toy from start to finish, so if you get stuck you can watch it to see what to do. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish. The fiddliest bit was the mane, but once I got the first few bits in I got the hang of it. Other than that everything was pretty straightforward, and I'm very happy with how it turned out (most importantly, so is my son!)

Pattern: Amigurumi Unicorn by Eden Dintsikos

Main Yarn: Hayfield Baby Chunky from Winnie's Wool Wagon

Coloured Yarn: from Aimee Rose Store

Stuffing & Safety Eyes: from Springwools