Product Review – Crochet Lites by Clover

A crochet hook with a shaft that lights up at the touch of a button, allowing you to crochet in poor light, or see those stitches a little more clearly in odd-colored yarn?  Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  I’d been eyeing the knitting needles that light up, so was very curious about the crochet hooks.  One of my sons did me the “favor” of losing my size G hook.  I needed it to finish the booties pictured below, so I went to JoAnns online to order a replacement and discovered that they had the Crochet Lites, so I ordered a few sight unseen (none of the stores around here carry them, even though the carry the lighted needles).  

 Big Mistake.

 The hooks finally arrived and I was in the middle of working on a bib with the fine Patons Grace cotton with a size E hook.  I was so excited to try out one of the new hooks: I tore it out of its packaging, picked up my project, and tried to start crocheting.  That is when disappointment set in. 

It appears that Clover picked someone to design the hook who has never crocheted before.  The shaft of the hook is never straight/of uniform diameter in any section.  The base of the hook is quite wide – probably about 3 times the 3.5 mm diameter that a size E hook’s shaft should be, and it then tapers all the way to the hook itself.  There is no portion of the shaft that is straight/remains the same size.  And there is no way to figure out where that 3.5 mm diameter is exactly – I’m guessing that it is right at the hook itself, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who only crochets at the hook itself without using the shaft to ensure that one’s stitches are consistently the same size.  And if you push your stitches up the shaft at all, your diameter quickly goes to something much larger than 3.5mm. 

I’ve pictured my two E hooks side by side so you can see what I am talking about. 

I love Clover’s Soft Touch hooks and was expecting these to be similar, or better.  Unfortunately, they are awful.  Simply awful.  Because the one thing that I *do* need to be able to do with a crochet hook is to make consistent stitches.  And the only way to do that is to have a shaft that has a uniform size, not one that starts out very wide and tapers the whole length of it.   I’m simply amazed that Clover, who usually puts out excellent products, messed this up so badly by letting non-crocheting engineers design the product and then obviously didn’t test the product with real crafters.   However, to be fair, it appears that this is a problem with the smaller hooks – the larger hooks that I purchased (H &  J) have what appears to be standard size and shape shafts.

So, if you you care about gauge and consistent stitch size, look to purchase anything other than Clover Crochet Lites for your smaller hooks. 

ETA:  I received a very courteous email from Clover and they have offered to replace my hooks with Soft Touch ones.   The representative was very concerned. 

ETA2: I heard again from Clover after I sent the above picture.  The representative says that they will contact the company that makes them for Clover and alert them of the issue, and ask them to fix it to get all the lite hooks to conform to the standard sizes.

***Final Update*** – Clover, showing excellent customer service, sent me replacement Soft Touch hooks.  Which, btw, are by far my favorite hooks on all types of yarn.