Crochet hook’s past personal, unpatterned

The crochet hook my son carved from hornbeam, a pale hued wood of the birch family, has a fine grain smooth as silk. It is the most beautiful tool I have ever owned.

His inspiration came not only from his own innate creativity, but from a visit he made to William Coperthwaite of Machiasport, who lives in a yurt and uses hand tools to craft furniture, knives, bowls, spoons and other utilitarian items.

Coperthwaite is the founder of The Yurt Foundation, established “to gather folk knowledge from cultures around the world and place it in a contemporary framework … designing ways of living that are simpler, more beautiful and more just.”

He is the author of “A Handmade Life,” which my son had received as a gift from friends who introduced him to Coperthwaite.

I knew from the tale my son told of his visit to Coperthwaite and from the way he lingered over each page of the book that he was inspired. I could see his mind spinning and weaving ideas that sooner or later would coalesce into a form both useful and beautiful.

I expected him to carve a bowl, a spoon or perhaps even a knife handle. I did not expect him to carve a crochet hook of wood he found in a cut-over area on Peaked Mountain in Clifton.

The hook’s beauty goes beyond color, shape, grain and texture of wood. It reflects the essence of my son’s mind and spirit in its bold lines. The design came out of his head; he had no factory manufactured hook to go by. He had, of course, seen my collection of plastic and aluminum crochet hooks. Indeed, he had seen such tools in my hands from the time he was an infant. Some of the garments he wore when I brought him home from the hospital in 1971 were a white wool sweater, bonnet and bootees I had crocheted before his birth. But when he carved the crochet hook from hornbeam, all he had was a picture in his mind of what he wanted to make and how he wanted it to look.

What makes the hook so remarkable to me, besides the fact that its maker is my son, is that he is an electrical engineer, not an artist. Somehow, the two professions are kin. It takes the ability to visualize what the finished object will look like to carve a crochet hook. I assume it takes the same kind of skill to design a circuit board.

The crochet hook is large, more than 6 inches long, round, except for an inch in the middle, which has square sides. It tapers to a rounded point, the perfect size for chunky yarns.

I wasted no time in putting the hook to work. In my yarn stash I found a fat ball of bulky off-white wool. I fashioned it into a rolled brim hat edged with denim blue wool, embellished with a crocheted rose in the same blue. Inspired by my son’s example, I made the hat without a pattern. I thought about what I wanted it to look like and worked out the details as I went along.

After his success with the crochet hook, my son carved a spoon and several tools to aid him in making Turk’s head knots, intricate multistrand ropework used on sailing ships.

He has mentioned that he’s thinking about carving for me a blunt needle to use in sewing sweaters together, and a pair of knitting needles. He speaks of waste wood laying around on the ground in the areas where he hikes – oak, maple, birch, poplar – all of it potential material to use in his version of a “handmade life.”

To obtain more information about The Yurt Foundation, visit www.YurtSource.com, or write: The Yurt Foundation, Dickinson Reach, Machiasport, ME 04655.

Snippets

Thai Silks, which sells silk fabric by the yard, also sells silk shawls, scarves and clothing suitable for dyeing and embellishing. Visit www.thaisilks.com for a catalog.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.