Thread Crochet and Snowflakes

Online Retailers

Lacis sells the tiniest crochet hooks I've seen anywhere, Inox hooks with wooden handles, bone and shell yarn hooks, and the best selection of hairpin lace frames. Don't neglect to check out the lace making threads (Cebelia (all sizes & colors), Cordonnet (ditto), tatting thread, Flora, Floche, silk, rayon, linen, shetland wool). Then you must visit the separate book catalog section of their site for reprints of antique patterns and interesting imported ones, plus just about all of the must-have crochet bookshelf. Very reliable, a family business dedicated to preservation of all kinds of historic needle-arts. Visit the store in Berkeley, CA if you ever get the chance -- definitely worth a side trip if you're anywhere in the SF Bay Area. Sort of average shipping speed, not lightning fast but not bad either.

Country Yarns Excellent pattern selection (from old and new Leisure Arts to hard to find Elizabeth Hiddleson), both Cebelia and Optima thread in all of their colors. Very good reputation, and really excellent prices on thread. Alas, no secure server, so you need to use old-fashioned methods to get your visa number to her the first time. My order arrived ASAP.

Lone Star Yarns Nicola, Regina, Optima (variegated colors only), Clea,, Cebelia and handpainted thread. Thread hooks from Profi and Addi, yarh hooks from Clover, Addi and Brittany. Ships very fast!

Patternworks Look under Lace weight yarns for Opera, Regina, Manuela, Cordonnet, not to mention lace-weight linen thread, cobweb wool, and silk/mohair and silk/cashmere blends (all still lace-weight). Also Addi hooks (the ones with caps). Ships promptly, very reliable. Very professional mail-order business -- the glossy upscale yarn shop of the ecommerce/catalog world.

Needlepoint Joint Great selection of crochet threads: DMC, Opera, Manuela (solids and variegated), Anchor, Londonderry Linen in many sizes, Gudebrode & Kanagawa silk, LBH & DMC tatting thread. Also Inox and Clover hooks, and wood hooks from Brittany and Nobel. And cool historical crochet books too. I haven't ordered from them but they were recommended...

Handy Hands is a tatting supply shop, but their threads page has color cards for 50 Cordonnet in colors, Flora and Manuela in all solid and variegated colors, so it looks like they carry it all. This is also the cheapest place to get size 15 & 16 hooks. They will also send a paper catalog with even more threads in it. Recommended by a list-er.

Snowgoose is another tatting supplier, and their thread pages offer pretty complete lines of many threads: Ancor (Mez/Cornonnet, Liana, Mercer, and Mercer tatting), Flora, Handy Hands Cordonnet, Manuela, and Kanagawa silk. They have color charts online for about half of these threads. Tatting people order lots of stuff from Snowgoose, so I think they must be good.

Knight's Thread Express All thread, all the time. It's a bit baroque to navigate into the online catalog, but here's a link to the crochet section. Buy Cebelia in all sizes and colors, get bulk discounts, and check it out, they even have Cebelia #40!! Also Cordonnet, all colors of DMC Tatting thread, and more. Lots of pearl cotton, other groovy fibers. I haven't ordered her yet, but I plan to...

Thread Garden at the Yarn Yard I don't know anyone who's ordered here yet, but gosh, they have an absolutely amazing selection of threads: DMC Tatting Thread, Flora, size 50 Cordonnet in colors, Mimosa, Manuela, Paradies Fiore, Floche ... They also have scanned color cards for most of these!

Knit2Together An interesting thread selection, spread between their crochet and tatting pages. Finca Perle cotton, Flora in many colors, Handy Hands #50 Cordonnet, DMC tatting & Traditions. I haven't tried them either, but they have a color card for Finca online.

Needles! This place has tooks for all kinds of needlework, but what I notice is the amazing selection of crochet hooks: abalone, brass, ebony, bullion stitch hooks, hooks with handles, just about any kind of hook I've ever heard of. The site navigation is very weird -- the master stock list never goes away, it just unfolds new subsections, and often it looks like nothing changed after the page reloads. Look carefully and there will be a new sub-selection. Takes several clicks to get to the actual items. BTW, I just found this site, haven't ordered anything yet, but I plan to.

Annie's Attic I also list her as a manufacturer, but Annie's Attic has an extensive online catalog of patterns by Annie's Attic, House of White Birches, & The Needlecraft Shop. Also rayon & other threads, other cool stuff. They seem to have updated their shipping protocol so that items now arrive in a week or so, but they are still prone to glitches. Most catalog/website order-glitch problems can be quickly resolved by a phone call or email to their customer service department, but their pattern clubs seem to have major billing problems.

American School of Needlework also sells their patterns online. These people really listen to what we internet crocheters (and knitters) say on our mailinglists, and tailor their product line in response. And they seem like really nice ladies too. I feel good buying their patterns.

Herrschners All DMC and Coats & Clark threads, including Opera. They sell Optima online, and other exotic threads in the Yarn Shoppe paper catalog. Their new thing is Twilley's thread, which is also available online though not on the crochet threads page (type "Twilleys" into the search box).. Boye and Susan Bates hooks. Extensive inventory, though occasional glitches on orders can be frustrating to resolve. But they're an established catalog retailer who's made it online, their prices are good enough to make up for shipping costs, and they have lots and lots of stuff.

Ebay -- find out of print patterns, bid them up to absurd prices, enjoy the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Or even find the occasional gem that nobody else seems to want, and pay little more than postage. Break the bank for antique hooks, and vintage patterns, or get other people's leftover yarn scraps for a song. Better yet, cull your stash and sell it to us...

Hard to Find Needlework Books Out of print patterns. Look under "Knitting and Crochet", since there's no crochet-only section. I've ordered from her, and it all worked out just fine. You can also sign up for email catalogs for your favorite crafts, or at least you used to be able to...

Snowflake Patterns Online

OK, I finally made my own Free Online Snowflake Patterns page

The snowflake section of Martha aka StarGazer's wonderful archive of free pattern links has a large colletion of free online snowflake patterns.

Crochet Memories sells several sets of snowflake patterns that you can purchase online.

Interesting Stuff

Mercerized?? Ever wondered just what mercerized means?

Bead Crochet dot com Animated stitch demos, reviews, and more.

Manufacturing Crochet Hooks A Japanese page with English text too.

The WayBack Machine (web.archive.org) lets you resuscitate dead bookmarks or dead links you find on the web. When you see the dreaded 404 Not Found, copy the dead url , go to WayBack, and paste the url into the search box. The results page is a bunch of dates -- just chose one (they're dates when wayback crawled the site). Great for finding disappeared patterns!

Symbol Crochet is the way to go -- check out this excellent tutorial! Crochet Memories has some chart symbols as well as stitch descriptions on her basic Crochet Charts and Advanced Charts pages. She also has really good info on blocking, stiffeners, etc.

C is for Crochet is a huge collection of crochet patterns and links, maintained in memory of the woman who started it. Because of all the traffic, you might try the mirror sites: http://seafore.8m.com/ and http://members.aol.com/seafore99/Welcome.html

Martha aka StarGazer has an amazing list of crochet and craft links -- the full archive that contains the free snowflake link above. Free patterns in every category you can think of, but don't overlook the Crochet Instruction Links , the How to Links , or the Stitch Links -- it's not to late to learn something new every day!

About.com's crochet section (used to be crochet.miningco.com) has all kinds of interesting crochet articles. Great resource for how to do different stitches, hints and tips, etc. But their really irritating "portal" formatting ensures that the actual info on each page is vastly outweighed by numerous links to everything you could be looking at instead, much of which has little to do with anything we care about. The portal fad seems to be fading, thank the loa of cyberspace, so maybe soon the powers of about.com will revamp in mad pursuit of some less irritating web craze...

For Crochet History Buffs

History of Irish Lace Lots of pictures, lots of interesting text.

Antique steel hooks and some history of steel hooks from The Hook and the Book: the Emergence of Crochet and Knitting in American Culture 1840-1876 -- from The Library Company of Philidelphia.

Vintage Hook Collection by Brenda Beckman.

Alorna also has a a bunch of lovely old hooks and tatting shuttles.

CGOA Hook Classification System, for collectors

Crochet Organizations and Mailing Lists

Crochet Guild of America is the great-grandma of crochet groups in the US. Their website has tutorials and an amazing selection of links. They sponsor the Chain Link Crochet Conference, have a lending library for members, and are generally a good thing. If only membership cost a little less... well, our local crochet group is about to become a chapter!

CrochetPartners is the biggest & oldest internet crochet group, and the one that got me started on the whole internet crochet scene. Their mailinglist is 100% crochet, which makes it less chatty than many lists.

Crochet Musings is another huge online crochet community. Their website has a ton of patterns, and the mailinglist is a bit more chatty, though pretty much on-topic most of the time. They do lots of exchanges and interesting online events, like charity crochet-a-thons.

Publishers and Manufacturers

Boye Hooks now part of Wrights

DMC Threads USA Cebelia, Cordonnet, Traditions, Brilliant Tatting Cotton, Pearl Cotton, and more. DMC's International Site is even cooler. It has color cards for many of their threads.

Coats and Clark Susan Bates hooks, Red Heart, Southmaid, Aunt Lydia's, J.P. Coats, etc. Some color cards.

American School of Needlework Patterns.

Leisure Arts Patterns.

Annie's Attic Includes House of White Birches, The Needlecraft Shop

Elmore-Pisgah manufactues lots of different kinds of threads and yarns.

Snowflakes & Thread Crochet

Links