Giraffe Bookmark

I nearly forgot! I’ve been planning for a while to make a giraffe bookmark for Christmas – just as a little addition to another, bigger and better gift. The bit about it being a giraffe is the point. It’s only a bookmark because I couldn’t find anything else in a giraffe theme that I liked enough.

The pattern was free, and so I have no real complaints. But as a newish crocheter there was a lot of “I have no idea what I’m doing” going on while I made this. Like here. I was completely unsure of everything at this point.

 

But whatever, I got it done and it looks like a giraffe. A really huge giraffe – as bookmarks go that is. Its head is nearly the size of my palm. I did use thicker yarn than the pattern suggested. It said “10” and I used “12” (Freccia from Anchor). I have no idea what that means, other than that these crochet yarns have a weight system of their own.

I’m stiffening it with sugar-water (1 dl sugar, 1 dl water). I hope the sugar is not a problem if this bookmark is actually used.

I hadn’t used this crochet hook before, and I noticed something. When the hook is that small, I can’t really see which way it’s pointing. And when I can’t see, a round handle like that doesn’t really work. Some shaping in the handle allows me to feel what the hook is doing even though I can’t see it.

The round handle might be better for my hands if it worked at all in practice. In a lot of hooks the handle is very far from the tip of the hook, and the way I crochet means I need to have my fingers right near the hook itself. Like so:

 

So the handle is pressed against my palm where it does no good at all.

I have a completely random assortment of hooks, and have come to love certain characteristics in them. Like I know now that I prefer my hooks to be sharp and thin as opposed to blunt and round. I only realized this after buying a hook like that completely accidentally. I have no idea how one goes about finding hooks with certain characteristics, but maybe I’ll come across some more if I keep my eyes open for them.