Pages

Winner + Getting the Crochet Results You Want

Yarn crafters know that the quickest path to a successful project is the right tools. With the Knitter’s Pride range of crochet hooks, there’s the right hook to meet the needs of any project you have in mind. Let’s take a look at the variety of materials and styles available.


Crochet Hook Style and Materials


Crochet hooks can be made of almost any material; the tinier sizes tend to be steel, with acrylic, aluminum, bamboo and wood being the most common choices for standard and larger sizes. The two major styles of crochet hooks are inline and tapered, illustrated in the photo below:
From L-R: Waves, Bamboo and Dreamz hooks.
The hook on the far left shows the inline style: the hook profile remains within the overall diameter of the entire tool, while the two hooks on the right show the tapered style, where the hook widens into the labeled hook size from a slender neck. The inline style also has a distinctly flat neck where the tapered style is always cylindrical. Style is a matter of individual preference, although some beginning crocheters find it easier to maintain uniform tension in their loops with an inline hook.


Knitter's Pride has hooks in both styles: Symfonie Dreamz offers inline style hooks for both the single ended and Tunisian styles; the Basix Birch and Jumbo Birch lines offer inline style single ended hooks, and Dreamz offers tapered style hooks for both the single ended and Tunisian styles, and Waves offer tapered single ended hooks which are color-coded by size.


But what hook do you choose for which project? Again, personal preference is always going to be the primary determination, but there are some guidelines to keep in mind.


Small-Diameter Crochet Hooks


The small mm diameter steel hooks are traditionally used for fine projects using crochet cotton like bedspreads, doilies and filet crochet. They are also fantastic tools for adding beads to either crochet or knitting projects as you can actually put the bead on the hooks and add it to a specific stitch, rather than pre-stringing them and sliding them up your yarn. Here’s a video that demonstrates this technique. They are also handy for all kinds of household repairs that involve threading something through a tiny opening!


Letter-Sized Crochet Hooks


Wooden crochet hooks, like the Basix and the Symfonie Dreamz are warm in the hand and somewhat flexible. Our popular Waves line offers a tapered aluminum hook on a soft-grip handle, color-coded for individual sizes. Our standard Aluminum hooks offer the soft-grip only in black, but the hooks in silver- or gold-tone, as well as traditional individual rigid Tunisian single ended crochet hooks.
Waves Crochet Hooks


Interchangeable Crochet Hooks with Cords


Whether you’re new to crochet or a veteran, you will find the Knitter’s Pride Symfonie Dreamz Interchangeable Crochet Hook set a versatile addition to your yarn tools. Color-coded by size just like the Dreamz Interchangeable Knitting Needle Set, our Crochet Hook set includes our flexible cables which screw into a ferrule at the bottom of each hook, converting them into adjustable-length Tunisian (or afghan) crochet hooks. Our Bamboo line also offers individual interchangeable hooks that will fit any of our cords, too.


Traditionally, Tunisian crochet is worked on a long crochet hook, rather like a single knitting needle with a hook on one end. By replacing a fixed-length rigid tool with an adjustable-length flexible cable, the Knitter's Pride Dreamz Interchangeable Crochet Hook set eliminates the limitations of project width that were determined by the length of the crochet hook. Rather than seaming together panels of a specific width, the crocheter can make a project as wide as her longest cable.
The combination of a regular-sized crochet hook with the flexible cable is easier on the Tunisian crocheter’s hands and wrists, as the cable holds the weight of the project, just as circular knitting needles take the weight off knitters’ wrists. In addition, inventive crocheters have created techniques that take advantage of the flexible cable. Jennifer Hansen of Stitch Diva, for example, has introduced a way to work Tunisian crochet in the round, based on the Magic Loop knitting technique, that utilizes the Dreamz Interchangeable Crochet hook and cable combination. You can find her Craftsy tutorials for this technique here.


There's one more use for our Dreamz Interchangeable crochet hooks that is worthy of note: it is the perfect tool for one of the most-hated knitting tasks: picking up stitches! While most of us have finagled a way to use circular knitting needles to draw those loops of yarn through a bound-off edge to put a collar on a sweater, for example, it isn’t easy. But it can be with the right hook and cable combination. Drawing those loops through the knitted fabric is so much easier with a crochet hook, and you can keep on sliding them down the cable until you reach your proper stitch count.  


Unscrew the hook and the cap end from the cable, then screw on your knitting needle tips, and you’re ready to knit your collar with much less frustration!


Whether you’re a crocheter, a Tunisian crocheter or a knitter, our crochet hooks and accessories have what you need to make your projects perfect. You can find all of our crochet options here, under the Crochet menu. Happy hooking!

Winner

Congratulations to Raveler Jamestull, you've won this month's blog giveaway! We will get in touch with you shortly to arrange for the delivery of your prize, a set of Knitter's Pride Knit Blockers. Thanks to everyone who entered this month's contest!

Giveaway + Designer Spotlight: Susanna IC

August is a great time of year to give lace knitting a try! Our previous blog posts focused on lace knitting tools & techniques and blocking your finished project, and today we are excited to spotlight a fabulous knitwear designer who is known for stunning lace designs (and more): Susanna IC. 

After nine years in Europe, Susanna IC now lives deep in the heart of Texas with her husband, two sons, one guinea pig and countless balls of yarn. Besides a background in fashion design, she has a Master’s degree in art history and a Bachelors’s in studio arts, all of which continue to inspire her knitting. Her designs have appeared in numerous online and print publications, such as Interweave Knits, Jane Austen Knits, Twist Collective, Brooklyn Tweed’s Wool People, and Knitty. You can view all of Susanna's designs here on Ravelry and keep up with her latest creations on her blog at artqualia.com.

When did you learn to knit/crochet?

My grandmother was a great knitter; she taught me how to crochet when I was five and she wanted to teach me how to knit as well, but she was left-handed, and I just could not figure out how to mirror her movements and make the stitches with my right hand. Fast forward to when my older son was six months old and I had a little extra time on my hands while he was sleeping. I thought that making adorable baby sweaters would be fun, so I decided to give knitting one more try. I picked up a how-to knit book and instantly fell in love.

How did you get started designing?


My first swatch was the back of my first baby sweater, which in a way was my first knitted design as well. Learning to knit alone from a book, I did not even realize that there were detailed knitting patterns to follow, so I just sort of made it all up as I went along. I have a background in fashion design and I’ve sewn all my life, so the designing part of knitting came naturally. Few years later, after I added some of my original projects to Ravelry, people asked about them and I wrote a few of them up as patterns. Next, I’ve sent out design submissions to several publications and they were accepted and everything just took off from there.

Pyropa shawl pattern, from Knitty First Fall 2016.
What are your favorite projects to design?

Looking at the majority of my designs I guess you would say that I live for shawls. Well, that’s true, I absolutely adore creating shawls of all sorts, but I really love all kinds of knitting - lace and cables and texture, accessories and garments, simple and complex. I absolutely love the moment of inspiration, which can come from anywhere - nature, books, movies, yarn color, etc. After that, watching the vision come to life on the needles is exhilarating and blocking lace is always a wonderful surprise. I even like the math of knit design. I guess I really do love the entire process, including ripping and reknitting.


What is your absolute favorite Knitter's Pride product, the one you would HAVE to have if you were stranded on a desert island?

I learned to knit on straight needles and for several years I did not use anything else because I did not realize how limiting the straight needles were. It was only after I decided to try colorwork in the round that I discovered interchangeable circular needles. I purchased the full set of the original nickel plated needles and I’ve never looked back. The needles are durable and very smooth with tapered tips that are perfect for intricate lace as well as cables and texture. I love how versatile and fast they are, and I use them for all types of yarn. Over the years, I’ve added many extra tips to my collection in the sizes I use most often because I usually have several design projects on the needles and I don’t want to wait for the correct needle size to free up.

Mina shawl, available on Ravelry

Many knitters might be intimidated by the thought of knitting lace. How would you convince someone to give it a try? 

I think that knitting lace is like any other knitting and anyone can do it; it’s really just knit and purl stitches combined with a few decreases and increases, which create interesting patterns depending on how they are placed. That said, any new technique can take some time to master and, as the saying goes, a little practice goes a long way. The first lace shawl I’ve ever made took me a while because I had to concentrate on every stitch; however, that same shawl would be a quick project now.


To get started, you’d want to choose a simple lace pattern with a short repeat, about ten to twelve stitches, so that the stitch sequence can be easily memorized. Look for a pattern with resting rows; this means that the right side patterned rows are separated by purled wrong side rows. If you’d rather not jump directly into a project, a small swatch of a few pattern repeats can help you learn the stitches and the sequence in which they are combined. Also, knitting lace does not necessarily mean lace weight yarn, so if you find lace weight yarns too fiddly to start with, you can use a fingering or sport weight yarn instead.

Rhodora shawl, from Twist Collective Spring/Summer 2016
What are some of your foolproof tips for success with lace projects?

When reading lace charts for the first few times, it can be helpful to color code the stitch symbols so that you can easily identify all those similar-looking symbols. Removable highlighter tape or sticky note placed on the chart can be great help in keeping track of the row you’re currently working on, and placing stitch markers on the needles to separate the pattern repeats will help you keep the stitch count correct. These are just a few ideas that helped me when I started knitting lace. Give it a try and in no time you will be creating masterpieces.

Belarra shawl, from Twist Collective Spring/Summer 2014



Giveaway
This month, one lucky blog reader will win a set of Knitter's Pride Knit Blockers! To enter, leave a comment on this blog post sharing the name of your favorite Susanna IC pattern (click here to view them all on Ravelry). Be sure to also include your Ravelry ID or email address so that we can contact you if you win.

We will randomly select the winning comment to announce here on the Knitter's Pride blog on Friday, August 26. Good luck!