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