Damero Crochet Hook Case vs a Zipper Pouch: Which Is Worth It?

Short answer: for hooks that travel, the Damero crochet hook case is the better of these two. I have carried both, one after the other, and the difference is not the fabric or the closure. It is what happens inside. A plain canvas zipper pouch holds hooks in a pile. The Damero holds them standing in bottom slots with a top flap over them, and gives you three mesh pouches for the small tools that otherwise rattle around loose. After a year of carrying the Medium in my project bag, I would not go back. The pouch still won a few arguments, though, and I will get to every one of them.

I am Wanda Quintero. I am 57, I drive regional routes out of Visalia, California, and I have crocheted for about twenty years, most of it in thirty minute breaks and long layovers. My aunt Rosa taught me when I was 37. I make dishcloths, hats, scarves and baby blankets for family, and I do not sell any of it. Every tool here I bought myself, so a complaint is a real complaint. The Damero Medium came in October 2025. The canvas zipper pouch it replaced is still in this house, holding stitch markers in a drawer.

	Damero Hook Case	Plain Canvas Zipper Pouch
Hook storage	Bottom slots plus a top flap, so each hook sits point down and cannot slide up and out	One open compartment, so nine hooks settle into a heap
Finding the hook you want	The H hook is in the H slot every time, even in the dark	You sort by eye, or you tip the pouch out on the seat
Scissors, needles and counter	Three mesh pouches, one job each, nothing tangled together	They share space with the hooks, or you carry a second bag
Wiping off cab grime	Coated canvas surface, so a mark sits on top where a damp rag takes it	Plain canvas pulls the mark into the weave until laundry day
Shape in a packed bag	Box design keeps its footprint even when it is half empty	Flattens into whatever gap is left between other bags
Hooks longer than 6.5 inches	The Medium is sized for hooks up to 6.5 inches	Takes any length, including afghan hooks and cabled sets
Tools plus a work in progress	Tools only, by design	Takes the hook, the yarn and the dishcloth together
Weight in a carry bag	0.15 kg on the listing	Nothing to it but fabric, so lighter again
Opening at the end of a shift	The top flap lifts and the hooks are already standing	Find the pull, drag the zip around the curve, then sort
Best for	One working set of hooks and small tools, kept together	A single hook and a ball of yarn in a coat pocket

How I Ended Up Carrying Both

For years the pouch was fine, and I want to be fair to it. Plenty of crocheters reading this are using one right now and it works. Mine was a plain canvas zip bag about the size of a paperback, and it rode in my project bag next to the yarn and whatever dishcloth I was on. Hooks in, zip shut, into the sleeper. Nothing dramatic happened. It just slowly stopped being enough.

The trouble started with tools, not hooks. A pouch has one mouth, and by last summer that mouth was doing four jobs. The SINGER ProSeries scissors went in during January 2025, and they are for yarn tails only, never paper and never packaging. The FIVEIZERO yarn needles came in April 2025. The Clover counter came in August 2025. So one canvas bag was holding nine soft grip hooks, a pair of scissors, a needle case and a clicker. Everything was in there. Nothing was findable without emptying it.

I tried to fix it before I bought anything. First I wrapped a rubber band around the hook bundle to hold it together, and that lasted about a week, because I was unwrapping and rewrapping it eight times a day and the band kept catching on the soft grips. Then I tried a clear plastic sandwich bag inside the pouch, one for hooks and one for the small tools. That kept the tools out of the hooks, but the plastic got cloudy inside a month from cab dust, and the two bags slid over each other every time I pulled the pouch out. Both fixes worked in the sense that things stayed separated. Neither one stopped me from putting my hand in and coming out with the wrong thing.

The second trouble was the hooks themselves. Soft grip hooks are fatter than the aluminum ones Rosa gave me, and nine of them loose in one bag settle into a pile. I would unzip the thing at the end of a shift and look at hooks lying every direction, points at the seams. I could pick the right one out by feel eventually. Eventually is carrying a lot of the weight in that sentence.

Where the Damero Case Wins

The slots are the whole idea. Hooks drop point down into the bottom slots, and a top flap comes over the other end so they cannot slide out on the way up the step into the cab. That is the entire difference between a bag of hooks and a set of hooks. I open the top and the H hook is where the H hook was. The listing sizes the Medium for hooks up to 6.5 inches, and my BCMRUN set sits down in it without a fight.

The three mesh pouches do more for me than the hook slots, honestly, and that surprised me. One pouch holds the scissors. One holds two bent tip yarn needles, with the plastic ones and the storage box left home in a drawer. One holds the row counter. When I need to snip a tail, my hand goes to the right pouch while my eyes are still on the stitch. That is the sort of thing you stop noticing after a month, which is how you know it is working.

The third win is the outside. The listing calls it a canvas coated material with a box design, and both of those earn their place in a truck. Cab dust is real and coffee happens. A mark on a coated surface sits on top where a damp rag takes it off in a few seconds. The box shape also means the case does not fold in on itself inside a stuffed bag. It keeps a footprint, and that footprint is a genuine cost, which is the next section.

Nine hooks in an open pouch become a pile the minute you park. Nine hooks in slots are still nine hooks you can name in the dark.

Where a Plain Zipper Pouch Wins

Length, first, and it is not a small thing. The Medium is built for hooks up to 6.5 inches and that is the end of the conversation for anything longer. A pouch does not care. If you work Tunisian or use long afghan hooks, a zip bag swallows them whole and a slot case simply will not. I do not work either of those, so it costs me nothing. It would cost someone else the entire purchase, and they should know that before they order. Rosa works Tunisian, and she looked at my case and said, in her way, that it would do her no good at all.

Squash, second. My project bag is not a big bag. The box design that keeps the Damero upright also means it takes up room even when the case is half empty, where a canvas pouch flattens into whatever gap is left. And a pouch carries the work, not just the tools. Mine used to take the hook, the yarn and the dishcloth I was on, all in one, and the case cannot do that. My bag now needs both items in it instead of one. The first weekend I carried the case home, I pulled it out of the bag at my kitchen table and had nothing to work on, because I had packed the tools and forgotten the dishcloth altogether. That is a small thing that happens once and then never again, but it tells you the case is not a project bag.

Weight is the last small point. The listing puts the case at 0.15 kg. That is not heavy, but it is not nothing in a bag you carry up a step and across a lot every week. A pouch has no structure and almost no weight, and on a hot afternoon that difference is noticeable.

What Actually Rides in Mine

All nine BCMRUN hooks, because a case with slots rewards keeping the set whole. I reach for the H most and it goes back in its slot every time, which is the habit the case teaches you. The scissors live in a mesh pouch and never touch anything but yarn. Two bent tip needles in another. The counter in the third, and it comes out only when I am counting.

The counter deserves a note of its own. I click rows by hand, one click per row, never stitches inside a row. It has no cord included, so nothing hangs around my neck, and it stays in its pouch until the row is done. In an open bag that clicker would knock against hooks and get pressed against the side, and a row count you cannot trust is worse than no count. A pocket that closes is the difference between knowing and guessing.

Packing it takes me under a minute now, and it used to take five. On a Sunday night at the kitchen table I lay the case open, drop the hooks in point down, put the scissors and the two bent needles and the counter each in their own pouch, and lift the top flap shut. Then the case goes in the project bag and the project bag goes by the door. Monday morning I do not think about it again until my first break, which is the point of the whole thing. A tool that needs managing every day is a tool you stop carrying, and I have stopped carrying enough things to know.

Tired Hands and an Open Top

I get ordinary stiffness in my right thumb and first two fingers after a long driving day. No diagnosis, nothing to manage, just tiredness that shows up around hour eight. It is the reason I notice closures. A zip on a soft bag means pinching a small pull and dragging it around a curve, sometimes twice, sometimes in the dark. The Damero lifts open at the top flap, and my hand is in it before I have decided what I am making.

The slots help the same way. Picking one hook out of a pile is a pinching job. Picking one hook out of a slot is a lift. On a cold morning in the sleeper the difference is bigger than it sounds, because my hands are stiff before I have even started. I am not going to tell you either one fixes anything, because it does not. It is less fiddling at the end of a day, and less fiddling is the reason the case stayed in the bag and the pouch went into a drawer with the stitch markers.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Damero if your hooks are 6.5 inches or shorter, if you carry scissors, needles and a counter alongside them, and if your project bag rides in a vehicle or gets stuffed into a tote. It suits a crocheter who keeps one working set and wants that set to be the same set every time she sits down. The three mesh pouches are the part people underrate. In practice they are why I stopped carrying a second little bag.

Stay with a zipper pouch if your hooks run longer than the Medium takes, if you want the tools and the work in progress in one place, or if flatness matters more to you than structure. A pouch is also the right answer for one hook and a ball of yarn in a coat pocket, because a box is the wrong shape for a coat pocket. Neither of these is a bad choice. They solve different problems, and only one of them is the problem I have on a Tuesday night in a sleeper cab.