Crochet hooks are pretty ingenious little tools. Have you ever crocheted with your fingers? If so, you’ll know how hard it is to get your stitches uniform. If not, watch this video and give it a try. It’s pretty fun. Can you imagine doing all crocheted projects with your fingers though? It would be horribly time consuming! That’s why crochet hooks are so great. This little tool not only has a hook to help you maneuver the yarn through stitches but it also has a way to make sure all your stitches are nice and neat and all the same size. Do you know what the name of these parts are? I didn’t until I had been crocheting wrong for a year or two.
Of course the Hook actually has a hook.
The tip of a hook is pointy and rounded so the hook can easily be inserted into a stitch, but not split the yarn.
The throat of the hook is generally smaller to give room for the arch of the hook and the movement of the yarn.
The shank is the part of the hook that determines the size of the stitch (or the gauge). This is the most important part of the hook and where the hook size is measured. When we start talking about stitches, I’ll show you how to crochet correctly in order to make sure you use the shank to it’s full potential.
The thumb grip is just what it’s called -- The place where you grip the hook. It’s really important that your hand doesn’t travel any further up the hook than here. If you reach the shank, you’re doing it wrong.
The rest of the hook is called the handle. Some crochet hooks have bigger handles than others for comfort purposes, but the run-of-the-mill hook has a handle about the same size in diameter as the shank.
The size of the hook is determined by the diameter of the shank which is measured in millimeters. Most US hooks are marked with letters and the small steel hooks are marked with number sizes but sometimes they like to get confusing and give the lettered hooks a number too (which match up with knitting needle sizes), it’s just easier to look for the metric size to be safe or to use a needle or hook guage to measure the size yourself.
Here is a conversion chart of the metric size and the letter or number equivalent of the most common hooks. Since the lettering system was created, there have been hooks come on the market for in-between sizes. These just have the millimeter size on them or a number, and do not have a letter.
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