product review | Doris Chan Crochet

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I whispered, not certain myself how far this obsession would lead. I scrambled for something clever to say but nothing else could possibly enter my head, swirling and pounding as it was with desperate desire.

She coyly lowered her eyes and as she carefully weighed her response the flush that rose to her cheeks was a deep petal pink. I had no right to expect a positive outcome. Had she not just witnessed the crashing and burning as I approached each of her dinner companions in turn and got shot down? She was my last chance. I knew it. She knew it. For a second I feared she would decline my offer and leave me to slink away into the night.

Wait, was that a smile?

The little crinkling at the sides of her mouth deepened into a delicious grin. When at last she lifted her eyes to meet mine, an unmistakable “yes” shone there, reflecting the same hunger and anticipation that no doubt colored my own gaze. With a simple nod she signaled her complete surrender.

Mo better go easy, I warned myself. At least try to act cool. Stop fidgeting with that wine glass. Stop checking that door every two seconds. Leaning back from the café table as nonchalantly as I could manage, I forced myself into the stillness of a savannah predator stalking a gazelle. Before I could draw another shivery breath the moment had arrived.

Hokey Smokes! Neither one of us had been fully prepared for the enormity of the commitment that lay before us. We hesitated out of respect for each other and for the bond our shared experience would soon forge.

Oh, the heck with propriety. Ellen and I grabbed our forks and greedily divvied up the best piece of chocolate cake I’d had since I landed in Columbus. She even left me most of the whipped cream AND I didn’t have to fight her for the cherry on top!

And that is pretty much how I got to know the inner Ellen Gormley. Hey, that cake was ginormous and I couldn’t talk anyone else into splitting some with me. The friend who shares dessert when nobody else dares, she’s a keeper!

That dinner was a few summers ago during Ellen’s first trip to The National NeedleArts (TNNA) industry show in Columbus, Ohio. Her generosity of spirit extends well beyond chocolate cake, as you might guess. This past year she has taken time from her own busy career and hectic family life to help me with DJC, Too!, my design line for girls, tweens and teens. She and her daughter are the wonderful photographer/model team whose lovely smiles grace the pages of every DJC2 pattern.

Foremost Ellen is an accomplished, award winning crochet designer with by now a hundred published designs, a prolific and popular blogger and an active professional member of CGOA. Her brand GoCrochet is a sign of thoughtful, functional and fun design. I am so happy to be today’s stop on the blog tour celebrating her first book. About time, girl!

Go Crochet! Afghan Design Workshop: 50 Motifs, 10 Projects, 1 of a Kind Results, (see it at the Amazon.com page or buy a signed copy through Ellen’s blog) is a feast for the eyes and food for your afghan-crocheting soul. Ellen’s inventive motifs, glorious colorwork and thoughtful presentation illustrate, page after page, her command of the genre. Loaded with stitch diagrams, assembly diagrams, full-color detailed images of every motif, full images of every afghan, all connected by Ellen’s playful prose, this is a wonderful resource for beginners and experienced crocheters alike.

I love how each set of instructions begins with a mini-story that reveals as much about the author as it does the motif or project. I admit I do not posses much afghan soul. But Go Crochet Afghan Design Workbook could help me grow one!

The motif that knocks me out is Last Blueberry. It’s just so juicy, I guess. Makes my teeth itch.

Mated here with the Oscar Square (yes, as in The Grouch) in the afghan Blueberry Pancakes, the effect is effervescently cheerful. Her words give me the impression we have yet another obsession in common and that I might not get so lucky if I were to ask Ellen to share her blueberry pancakes with me.

When you have your copy, go directly to page 35 (that is if you can stop yourself from being sidetracked by all those other eye-popping motifs) and read the introduction to Cherry Cordial. It goes a long way toward explaining how it happened that Ellen so willingly gave up the cherry on top of our chocolate cake that night, although knowing this does not make me love her any less!

>This post is all about teaching an old dog new tricks. It is not my imagination. I can tell, with each passing year, that I am losing brain function along with 1) patience, 2) near vision, 3) a waistline. I am extremely crabby now and have become my dad about some petty things (“my way or the highway”), but I hope I can remain open-minded, flexible, adaptable about the important things. Those who cannot adapt are doomed to extinction. However, when it comes to crochet tools, I am stubborn (some would say loyal) about my hooks.

I remember my mother teaching me to crochet, but not the exact hooks she put in my hands. Today I see she uses Boye hooks, so I assume Boye hooks were the ones of my early experience. I also see that Mom holds her hook with a pencil grip and wraps the feeder yarn firmly around her fingers. It dawns on me why I never took to crochet as a young girl. I must have tried it her way, learning by example. No wonder I ran away. It musta been awkward and uncomfortable. There was no way for me to have known that crochet could be done differently.

As an adult, I figured out that I’m a knife-hold crocheter, that I could relax the tension, and that I much prefer Susan Bates hooks. I’ve used Bates aluminum hooks for twenty years and have had little reason to try any others until recently. With so much crochet work on my plate as a designer, I’m finding the standard aluminum handles are cold and thin, two major contributors to hand fatigue.

I sampled all kinds of hooks in an effort to find a happy alternative, from plastic to bamboo to rosewood to maple and back again. My current favorite is a gorgeous hand crafted and carved hook from Grafton Fibers. It had better be perfect, after I beat up Tom over and over until he got it right! But I do not use my custom hooks for design work. Plastic hooks do not work for me at all. Bamboo hooks are nice, they are warm, but do not have a flattened grip to help me keep the tip from rotating, so they caused even more fatigue. When Susan Bates came out with a bamboo handled aluminum hook a couple of years ago, that became my go-to tool, and I was satisfied.

So understand, when my friend Vashti steered me to an exhibitor at the recent TNNA show in Columbus, Tulip Co., a Japanese manufacturer of handcrafting tools, I was ready to dig in my heels and resist. Kang Hyo Min, manager in Planning and Development, showed us Tulip Co.’s latest hooks, Etimo. Mr. Kang encouraged us to play with hooks and yarn provided, and we dutifully swatched up some stuff. WOWSERS! I could not let go of this hook. At the risk of sounding like a fracking commercial, this is the ultimate crochet tool on the planet.

The hook head is aluminum, but incredibly smooth, more highly polished than any I’ve seen, shaped somewhere between the bulbous Boye type and the in-line Bates type. In other words, the tip is tapered like the Boye, but with less of a bulb. The throat is not as pinched, is shorter, and returns to proper hook diameter sooner than the Boye. Etimo hooks have a shallower slot than my usual Bates, very similar in that way to the silhouette of Clover hooks. And unlike some other overseas manufacturers, Tulip makes their hooks in millimeter sizes that correspond exactly to American standard sizes, including the hard-to-find G-7 (4.5mm). That alone is enough for me to stand up and cheer! But there’s more to love.

The handle is made from a special kind of rubber, elastomer (as opposed to the hard ABS plastic grip of the Clover Soft Touch), that is bouncy, with a suede-like texture. The grip is hand shaped (as opposed to the cylindrical grips of the Addi and Bates Bamboo handle hooks) and the “fit” for me is perfect. One real problem I have with the Bates Bamboo handles is that the finish gets sticky, especially if you slather hand cream as frequently as I do, and it is a stickiness that never goes away. The Etimo elastomer handles never get sticky or tacky, no matter what. The surface actually seems to thrive on rich hand cream.

Mr. Kang sent me a set of Etimo hooks to try and they have become my tools of choice. I admit, it took a bit of getting used to at first. The shallower slot means that the tip is less hook-y than my usual Bates. In order to keep the yarn from slipping out of the hook, I find myself applying a teeny bit more tension and a touch of rotation. These subtle changes could ulimately affect my gauge, particularly when crocheting tall stitches, but no matter. I am a convert.

Etimo hooks will not be cheap, probably a dollar or two more than the other more widely distributed Japanese rival hooks, Clover Soft Touch, which retail for $6.99 each. But this tool will last a long time, and must be considered a worthwhile investment. As of today I am aware of no USA distributor or retailer of Tulip Etimo crochet hooks. But that will change.