Laurel Hill Crochet Hooks

Laurel Hill Crochet Hooks

What happens when beautiful natural materials are matched with commitment to excellence in craftsmanship?  When beauty and function are melded together?  Laurel Hill Crochet Hooks!  These beautiful hooks are each a work of art, and a wonderful addition to the hook collection of any active, avid crocheter.     I received two Laurel Hill crochet hooks as a holiday gift last winter. Each was attractively packaged on a card that told about the exotic wood from which it was made.  The woods—Nam Oc and Trai, in this case—are lovely to look at.  Because I am concerned about the health of tropical rainforests, I was glad to find out that these hooks are made from wood scraps left over in the manufacture of furniture and musical instruments.  The pieces are too small for their “other” uses, but are the ideal size for making crochet hooks.  Each wood is a slightly different color, ranging from rich shades of butterscotch and caramel through the black of ebony. 

The hooks have a distinctive shape, with a long tapered shaft behind the thumb rest, a unique shape and position of the thumb rest, and a tapered throat, ending in lace-friendly point at the top of the hook itself.  The hook’s throat is cut deeply and smoothly enough to hold yarn of various sizes. It’s shaped for ease in moving in and out of the crochet fabric, for catching and releasing loops, as needed, within each stitch.  The long shaft gives a wonderful balance to the whole tool, which lends a touch of speed and hand comfort to the work.  Speed and ease are also enhanced by the careful attention to smoothness and polish of the extremely fine-grained woods that have been used. These hooks have a velvety touch. The thumb rest is positioned a little forward of center on the shaft, and very smoothly shaped in a manner that offers comfort to the hand, no matter which “hook hold” the crocheter prefers.  I do a lot of lace work, and so the shape of the hook’s tip was a welcome discovery for me:  it’s sharply pointed, but not so narrowly tapered to that point that it would tend to split yarn.  Instead, it’s easy to insert the hook exactly between the threads I wish, but not easy to force between the plies of a strand of yarn, splitting it.  The only drawback I have found to the pleasure of using these fine hooks, is that the shaft diameter, between hook and thumb rest, is also tapered—this is elegant in appearance, but can make maintaining constant gauge a challenge.  When working a fancy stitch pattern, such as clusters of tall stitches, or bouillons, there’s a tendency for the loops placed on the hook first to be larger than those added near the end of the stitch process, because of the neck’s tapered shape. However, for any project using the basic, “regular” stitches, and in which speed, comfort and aesthetic beauty are important, these hooks positively outshine most of the competition!

In price, Laurel Hill hooks are comparable to other fine hooks, where the same attention to craftsmanship detail has been paid.  You can find less expensive hooks, and smooth them yourself, or wish the head were shaped a little differently, or that the balance was better.  It’s also possible to find more expensive hooks, with even more emphasis placed on luxury in one form or another. But as a balance, where form follows function; where value means both craftsmanship and fair price, where sustainable ecological practices meet responsible production and marketing, Laurel Hill hooks are a great value.  If you have not tried them out yet, I recommend using the Laurel Hill website to locate a retailer near you, or purchase them from one of the online shops that make them available to all of us!