Ariel Bookmiller tried multiple methods of contact to reach the owner of Chunky Boy craft handles. She was attempting to warn the purveyor of possible risks after accidentally impaling herself while trying to put the detachable silicone handle onto a crochet hook.
She never heard back.
Product complaints are one of two significant challenges facing the operation. In addition to questions about the quality of the handmade handle, Beth Ressel, a Broadalbin based woman in her early 30s, is navigating the sudden closure of the brand’s storefront at 132 Polar Plaza in Amsterdam. Ressel maintains that quality is good overall and that the company's recent move to manufacturing is due to high demand.
"The impetus to seek out manufacturing was actually that demand was so high I could no longer meet the demand for my product hand making it," Ressel told a Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers reporter. "So although the quality is higher in our manufactured product, obviously, and that's a huge plus the initial motivation to seek out manufacturing was because we were so popular."
Pictured is Ariel Bookmiller's hand in March 2023 when she punctured it with a crochet hook while attaching the Chunky Boy handle.
Last October, Ressel opened a yarn store in Amsterdam where she continued making the Chunky Boy herself. But, just months into a three-year lease, she closed the retail space, citing a lack of community support, according to a Facebook post.
Upon the store’s closure, a community member posted a question on a locally focused Facebook page questioning the store’s status. Chris Collins, of Broadalbin, commented with screenshots of a Reddit post containing a photo of Bookmiller’s hand pierced by a crochet hook with a Chunky Boy, saying that it was no surprise the store didn’t last long because quality had begun to decline.
“I wasn’t considering buying another handle at that point, but, just from seeing multiple posts online it’s pretty clear the quality of her hooks have declined since they’ve gotten so popular,” Collins wrote in a Facebook message to a reporter for The Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers.
Collins had previously purchased a Chunky Boy she was satisfied with.
“I feel bad because it has to be hard running a small business alongside a yarn shop with so many orders for these handles, but judging by the pictures I’ve seen they’ve been pretty bad and definitely turned me away from ordering again,” she said.
Last week, an Instagram post from Chunky Boy indicated that the brand had found a manufacturer to expedite production of the handles and pre-orders for the machine-made versions were live.
Seen is a screenshot of an email Ariel Bookmiller sent to Chunky Boy in an attempt to alert customers of potential risks. The author added a red strip to the image in order to conceal Bookmiller's email address.
Ressel, who the Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers featured in a January article about her recently opened brick and mortar business, responded after multiple requests for comment. A Facebook post on March 14 offered few details, except that the store would be closing as stock dwindled.
Bookmiller, of Appleton, Wisconsin, garnered attention in March 2023 for her post detailing her injurious experience with a Chunky Boy. Bookmiller was attempting to push the Chunky Boy onto a crochet hook when the hooked side went through her hand, puncturing between the metacarpals of her left hand index and middle fingers.
Concerned the same thing may happen to other customers, Bookmiller reached out to Ressel. The proprietor denies that Bookmiller ever directly reached out.
"She has never reached out to us directly. She's never given me an opportunity to speak with her," Ressel said. "Just gone to social media."
Bookmiller provided a screenshot of her email to chunkyboycraftcustomercare@gmail.com, which remains the primary email on the company’s website.
Seen is a screenshot of an email Ariel Bookmiller sent to Chunky Boy in an attempt to alert customers of potential risks. The author added a red strip to the image in order to conceal Bookmiller's email address.
“I'm not looking for anything,” Bookmiller said. “I was just like, you know, you need to be aware that this happened, right? And tell people about it, you know? Or like, do something safety wise.”
Other customers are longtime fans who keep coming back with nothing but good things to gush about the product.
Helena Stark has amassed more than half a million followers on her TikTok account @squish.and.co where she is currently chronicling crocheting her own wedding dress.
“I have a connective tissue disorder and joint issues and crocheting is terrible for your joints. I found I cannot crochet for more than 10 minutes without one of those,” Stark said of Chunky Boy handles.
Stark has never been paid to promote the Chunky Boy but has featured it on her profile when fans ask what’s on her hook. She said she has not experienced any issues in quality among her purchases.
“Cosmetically, I love them,” Stark said. “I have had some people ask what the heck they were, of course, but I go to a yarn group at my local library and everybody there has been like, ‘Oh my God, I want one of those.’ And yeah, I haven't really had any troubles with it.”
Ressel shared her creation on TikTok where videos of the product blew up and resulted in a high volume of sales. To some, it appeared Ressel was ill-equipped for the rush and the product’s quality suffered for it.
Bookmiller was just one of many posters sharing negative experiences in the r/crochet Reddit forum. Others shared photos of Chunky Boys with off-center insertion points, air bubbles, and untrimmed seams.
“I did give it a shot, but it just felt completely weird in my hand, especially with the hole being so off center on the bottom,” said an 18-year-old customer in Indiana, who asked to remain anonymous. “I felt like it wasn't even in my hands…I felt it at the top start to rip when I was using it and I only used it for a couple minutes. I was like ‘yeah, no, I’m just not going to do this’.”
Ressel attributes the negative social media attention to cyberbullying, saying that it comes with the trials of starting a small business.
“There's a lot more cyberbullying in being a small business owner these days than people necessarily realize,” Ressel said. “As far as irregularities, I am aware of that feedback. Up until now, each and every Chunky Boy has been hand made by us. There was not a manufacturing process; each and every one is hand poured and hand trimmed. Obviously we're not machines, we're not able to reach a level of perfection that manufacturing can.”
For some customers, however, these flaws made the Chunky Boy harder to use, defeating the purpose of the product.
Chunky Boys are meant to serve as an ergonomic handle to be attached to thin crochet hooks. The silicone cylinders feature a hole through them to insert a standard hook into. They cost $15.
“After using the product for months, I have found that they added to my pain more than the skinny hooks did,” Tigerlily Buchholz, a caregiver in Portland, Oregon, wrote in an email.
Buchholz provided photos of four Chunky Boys she purchased. Two were the first silicone version and two were the Chunky Boy 2.0, which was supposedly improved.
One of her first Chunky Boys, a purple one in size large, had an insertion point almost on the edge, making it “impossible to use,” per Buchholz.
The second batch, two bright green Chunky Boy 2.0, had some improvements but still didn’t feel quite market-ready.
“While the 2.0s had a better feeling in terms of density, they were still less than ideal for working with,” wrote Buchholz. “The second set came with similar cosmetic issues and yet another unusable crooked one. I also found that when I could remove a hook from the grip, it would always have a sticky residue left on it that took forever to come off.”
Multiple iterations of the Chunky Boy have been released since its inception. The first was a polymer clay version that was sculpted around aluminum crochet hooks.
“The old version that she had was really hard to remove from the hooks, and so I would just lazily buy another one, and another one,” said Stark.
