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:
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| 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.
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| 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!
