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Friday, August 22, 2014

Crochet Hook Size Reminders (best. idea. ever.)

At any given moment, I probably have four to five crochet projects going: large ones, like blankets that aren't very portable, small ones that I do carry around with me, experimental and pattern-trial projects, and usually a couple other things that I started even though I should have waited until some other project was completed.  

I always leave projects, take the hook with me to use elsewhere and then forgot what size I was using on the original piece.  I don't always use the hook recommended on patterns so there's no help to be found there, and I don't have enough hooks to leave them at the "project site" - especially my 4.00 mm, which has been my most frequently used hook lately.  Returning to a project after a week or two is something like this:  I'm positive I was using the 3.75 mm hook on this.  Or, maybe it was the 4.00 mm with really tight stitches?  I don't use the 3.25 mm very often, but I do recall picking it up recently... was it for this??  Yes, Yes, I'm almost practically mostly certainly positive!  This was the project I decided to use the smaller hook but the looser stitch on!!  Isn't it???  Isn't it?  Hello?  Hello, is anyone listening?  



So, I decided to solve my problem.  I packed my children up yesterday and took them to Hobby Lobby where they touched a lot of stuff like glass pumpkins and ceramic pilgrims, stroked fluffy fur-like fabric, flicked every dangly string of beads possible, didn't break anything but did attempt to fix a broken cash register, and tried to sneak candy onto the checkout counter hoping I would mistake it for yarn on sale and buy it.  

I got special pins and number beads.  

I had a lot of things on my to-do list for nap time yesterday.  None of them got done because I was obsessively focused on my concept: "marking" projects with the hook size so that I could walk away from it and not worry about what I was forgetting.   I made my new Hook Size Reminder Pins.  I am so excited about these!  Now, when I'm wondering what hook to grab for any of my works in progress, my wondering won't last long.  It's right there in black and white (with colorful beads, to boot!)  

There's no tutorial here.  It's too simple to insult your crafty intelligence with instructions.  The only things worth mentioning are * I tried it with plastic stitch markers first and it just didn't work * I was just going to use the color beads as the decimal point, but also ended up using them to "fill in" the space in front of and behind the number so they wouldn't slip around as much * I had wanted to color code the sizes with the beads, but a lot of the beads didn't fit, so I had to give up on the color coding and just use whichever beads fit on the pin * and it's worth going out to get the safety pins without the loop on the ends because then you can straighten them, put the beads on the "stationary" side of the pin and they won't slide off when you open the pin up :)

Note: I don't know why, but I find it much easier to identify my crochet hooks by size rather than letter (or number) code.  But if you're more comfortable with grabbing your "G" hook as opposed to "4mm", than these markers can easily be made with the letter and number beads instead of the sizes in mm.  (Here's a conversion chart.)









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