My turned rosewood distaff made by Enid Ashcroft is a beautiful piece of work. I appreciate that the top end is just the right size for a pencil topper, and not only does it function well for its intended purpose of holding fiber for spinning, it can also function as a ring holder. Pictured below it is holding many sizes of quartz bead rings.
The thought process that lead up to this discovery was “I need something that will keep these rings in size order during transport.”
My youngest is showing interest in crochet. One of the hardest parts of crochet (and knitting) is keeping an even tension. To assist, I made a tension ring. Yes, I did model it off of one I saw for sale, but I used 14 gauge aluminum wire from my stash to make it. Aluminum wire is very malleable, so a larger gauge (smaller number) is needed to hold the shape under use, but it is still easy to form toa finger in order to get good skin contact.
The shape of this ring makes it easy to slide the yarn under either a loop or a spiral, or have multiple points of contact. The more contact, the more drag, the more tension. It was a game changer for my daughter, who went from only being successful with assistance to chaining on her own.
I then made the mistake of introducing the double crochet. Too many steps. When she shows interest again, we’ll try a slip stitch, which only has one more step than a chain (inserting the hook into the work). There are historically created items that are made with only a slip stitch, so she can still feel accomplished. Sometimes baby steps are what works, and breaking tasks down to parts, finding what parts can be delegated or assisted to order to be successful.
Critters and Craft 