Harrison Richards of Furls Crochet with Lorene Eppolite

Harrison Richards of Furls Crochet with Lorene Eppolite (- who we didn’t hear from, but she’s been on before, link below) was the wonderful visit on the Yarn Thing podcast today, Harrison’s first visit of what we hope will be many more.

Harrison Richards
(image from @Crochet Savvy Magazine)

We don’t often visit with folks who have British accents (Northampton, England), so listening to his background story was lovely to hear. He attended St Andrews in Austin, Texas, which teaches K-12. While there he decided he wanted have a creative business where he would travel worldwide and provide a really cool product. He crocheted and knit, and in high school he made crochet hooks for his high school sweetheart, and sold a few to other friends. In college, he began tons of crochet hooks and sold them on Etsy. In two days he had a LARGE order for Loop (shop in the UK) and Furls Crochet was born.

@Furls Crochet, Candy Shop

At first, he made all kinds of shapes and dimensions, to explore what was effective, about 1,500 were made by hand. After about 8 months, he needed help with customer service among other things, which was hard to do, because he feels very strongly about the quality of his product. He brought on Chris Baker as a wood worker, later others to continue the Alpha Wood series (see also the Limited Edition) then Harrison began explore other materials, like the Candy Shop line.

Harrison studied how we use our hands, the MCP joint and it’s function when we crochet. Preventing arthritis, tendonitis, carpal tunnel and the damage that is very hard to heal or repair, many times irreparable, leading to having to give up handcrafts. Using a bigger hook or the ergonomic hooks can help. Harrison strives to make his hooks more comfortable for our hands as well as beautifully unique shapes!

The Furls Odyssey line is a nickel plated hook, heavier at that end for productivity, and, as the website says: unique center of balance creates a weight differential, driving hand energy into crocheting momentum rather than hand strain, with streamlined shape is extremely comfortable and relieves acute tension in knuckles, hands, and wrists.

Harrison says his someday have his hooks as easy to find and as affordable as what we might find at the big box stores. Plus he is working toward organizing our tools and streamlining our process. In the meantime, he has teamed up with friends in the crochet world for projects like Crochet-Alongs, which is where Lorene Eppolite of Cre8tion Crochet comes into the story. Each month on the Furls Blog, a pattern will be released and the designer will guide the Crochet-Along, last month was Crocodile-stitch fingerless gloves that friends of the participants noticed and asked for!

I love when he said ‘Life is too short, to work with ugly crochet Hooks’, and I believe I heard you cheering!

Furls Crochet can be found at the website: www.FurlsCrochet.com (look for wholesale if you are a LYS owners) and followed in social media at their Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube (or Vimeo), Pinterest and Tumbler.

If you missed getting to hear this LIVE, you can listen to the archived episode http://www.blogtalkradio.com/yarnthing/2016/12/08/harrison-richards-of-furls-crochet-with-lorene-eppolite or you can watch the behind-the-scenes video from her Facebook page.

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