I may not have been crocheting very long, but there is one thing I have learned very quickly – to be good at making amigurumi, you either need to be good at counting, or have a stitch marker on hand.

Until recently, I’ve been doing it the hardcore way – counting. Counting is all well and good until you get distracted by something shiny, lose count and have to rip the whole thing apart because you have no idea where you began your last round. And let me tell you, that gets old fast. So, I decided I would bite the bullet and get a stitch marker. At least, that was the plan until I saw how much those things cost! The only ones I could find were decorated with glamourous, Czech glass beads and the like, and were at least $10. Admittedly it wasn’t an exhaustive search, but I’d seen enough. My local Spotlight doesn’t have them, but I’m not discounting the possibility that other, better-stocked and better-organised Spotlights might. I have found several tutorials to make my own which I may end up doing one day, but until then, I’ve been experimenting with makeshift stitch markers around my home.

1. A small safety pin. Worked extremely well, except I lost it because it was, well, small.

2. A bobby pin. This is probably my favourite, as I have a metric shitload of them so if I lose one, it’s not a worry. The only problem is, sometimes they can have a little bit of grime caught in them and it can mark your yarn, so it’s best to use ones you know haven’t been near hair or anything else.

3. An earring. You know, one of those fishhook shaped ones. It worked ok for the most part, but had an annoying tendency to fall out at inopportune moments.

I imagine a paperclip would work wonders, but I haven’t tried one yet as I don’t own any. I have heard people say good things about bits of contrasting yarn, and one book I have recommends contrasting felt, but I feel that would be too fiddly for me to bother with.

Anyway, those are my handy dandy tips for using household objects as stitch markers, and if anyone knows of a good, cheap source for stitch markers, hit me up!