Running Armband

I hate running but gimmicky gadgets will get me to try anything and so I found myself looking forward to a jog around after I installed miCoach from adidas on my phone – it’s really cool and free so I do recommend giving it a try. This means I need my phone with me though and not hidden in a pocket since it needs GPS signals to let me know my speed and plot my route and things. Crochet to the rescue! My first attempt at an armband was just a stretchy band with a simple phone case sewn on. This worked ok but not great – It felt tight enough when I put it on but as I jogged up and down it shifted and felt too loose. This is my improved design with a long strap and velcro so you can pull it as tight as you like and if the crochet stretches or you lose weight or someone else wants to borrow it then you can just pull it a bit tighter. It also has an extra pocket for my keys.

What you will need:

*About 50g of DK weight yarn and a suitable sized hook (I used 4mm)

*A small amount of Velcro (you could use a loop and button to close but then it won’t be adjustable)

*A yarn needle for sewing the work and a regular needle and thread for sewing on the Velcro

*A metal or plastic ring for looping the strap through – I used one from the strap of an old bag – it is square and works fine but having used it a couple of times I think a circular one would be slightly better as it tends to twist.

*Knowledge of English crochet terms – have a look at the conversion chart for the American equivalents.

Step 1. Leaving a longish tail for sewing later, chain the length of your metal or plastic ring (if it’s circular then chain just less than the diameter). I chained 7.

Step 2. Ch1, turn, dc each stitch to the end of the row.

Repeat step 2 until the work is about 4cm (1.5″) long.

Step 3. Place your phone/mp3 player/ipod so that the work is in the centre of one edge and chain to reach the edge:

Step 4. ch1, turn, dc each stitch of the row. Now instead of turning chain until the total length of the work is twice that of your phone/ipod etc:

Step 5. ch1, turn, dc each stitch to the end of the row.

Repeat step 5 until the work is wide enough to cover your phone. If you would like an extra pocket for your keys etc then continue adding rows until the work is large enough.

Step 6. ch1, turn, dc each stitch until you reach the point opposite the end of the initial little tab.

Step 7. ch1, turn, dc the same number of stitches as you chained in step 1. You are creating a strap the same width as, and directly opposite the initial tab.

Repeat step 7 until you have a strap long enough to wrap completely around your arm twice. This will seem very long but wrapping it all around makes it more secure. Fasten off:

Step 8. Fold the initial tab in half and sew it around the ring:

Step 9. Fold the large section of work up and sew up both edges. If you crocheted extra to hold keys etc. then insert your phone and sew up the edge to create two separate pockets. Leave a gap in your sewing at the position your headphones will plug in:

Step 10. Sew a small square of the hook type of Velcro to the end of the long strap:

Step 11. Put your phone/ipod into its pocket and any keys or anything else you’ll be carrying. Insert the long strap through the ring and fold it back on itself. Put the armband on and wrap the strap around your arm. Pull it as tight as feels secure and mark the point the small square of Velcro reaches. Take the armband off and sew a long length of the loop type of Velcro to the strap at the position you marked (this should be on the opposite side of the strap to the first square of Velcro). Line up the centre of the Velcro strip with the position you marked to make the strap adjustable in either direction. The longer the strip of Velcro, the more adjustable the band will be:

Weave in any loose ends you have and go for a jog :)

Filed under: crochet, instructions, useful stuff, armband, case, crochet, crochet pattern, easy, exercise, instructions, mobile phone case, pattern, running

Watermelon Coin Purse

A crocheted coin purse with lining and zip. I used DK yarn and this purse is big enough to fit several cards inside as well as money. Crochet terms are English so have a look at the conversion chart for the American equivalents.

1. In red chain 3.

2. 3dc in 3rd chain from hook.

3. chain 1, turn, 2dc in each stitch. (6 stitches total)

4. ch1, turn, *2dc, dc

*repeat twice more. (9 stitches)

5. ch1, turn, *2dc, dc, dc

*repeat twice more. (12 stitches)

6. ch1, turn, *2dc, dc, dc, dc

*repeat twice more. (15 stitches)

7. ch1, turn, *2dc, dc, dc, dc, dc

*repeat twice more. (18 stitches)

8. Continue in this way for 9 more rows – adding one extra dc between increases on each row. You should now have 45 stitches.

At this point fold your work in half and notice that because we’ve been increasing in the same places each time the curved section is not smooth and doesn’t match up well. We will now correct this:

9. ch1, turn, dc first 7 stitches, 2dc, dc next 14 stitches, 2dc, dc next 14 stitches, 2dc, dc final 7 stitches. (48 stitches total)

10. ch1, turn, dc first 8, 2dc, dc next 15, 2dc, dc next 15, 2dc, dc final 7. (51 stitches)

11. ch1, turn, dc first 8, 2dc, dc next 16, 2dc, dc next 16, 2dc, dc final 8. (54 stitches)

12. ch1, turn, dc first 9, 2dc, dc next 17, 2dc, dc next 17, 2dc, dc final 8. (57 stitches)

13. ch1, turn, dc first 9, 2dc, dc next 18, 2dc, dc next 18, 2dc, dc final 9. (60 stitches)

14. ch1, turn, dc first 10, 2dc, dc next 19, 2dc, dc next 19, 2dc, dc final 9. (63 stitches)

15. ch1, turn, dc first 10, 2dc, dc next 20, 2dc, dc next 20, 2dc, dc final 10. (66 stitches)

16. ch1, turn, dc first 11, 2dc, dc next 21, 2dc, dc next 21, 2dc, dc final 10. (69 stitches)

Change colour to cream/white

17. ch1, turn, dc first 11, 2dc, dc next 22, 2dc, dc next 22, 2dc, dc final 11. (72 stitches)

18. ch1, turn, dc first 12, 2dc, dc next 23, 2dc, dc next 23, 2dc, dc final 11. (75 stitches)

Change colour to green

19. ch1, turn, dc first 12, 2dc, dc next 24, 2dc, dc next 24, 2dc, dc final 12. (78 stitches)

20. ch1, turn, dc first 13, 2dc, dc next 25, 2dc, dc next 25, 2dc, dc final 12. (81 stitches)

21. ch1, turn, dc first 13, 2dc, dc next 26, 2dc, dc next 26, 2dc, dc final 13. (84 stitches)

Fasten off. Fold in half again and the curved edges should now match up much better than before.

SEEDS (Make 6)

I used black crochet thread and a 2mm hook to create the seeds – if you don’t have these then small scraps of black felt cut to the same shape would work just as well.

1. Chain 6, slip stitch into the 2nd chain from the hook.

2. dc into next chain, (htr, tr, htr) all into next chain, dc, sl.

3. ch1, do not turn but work down the opposite side of the starting chain, sl, dc, (htr, tr, htr), dc, sl. Fasten off.

Sew the seeds evenly around the watermelon.

Fold the work in half with the seeds facing out and whip stitch along the straight edge using the loose tails from crocheting – use red on the red section, green on the green etc.

LINING

To make the lining I highly recommend this fantastic tutorial from futuregirl. I just made my lining up as I went along – it works and I’ll go through how I did it but her’s are things of beauty in their own right.

1. Cut a semicircle of green material to the same size as the crocheted semicircle:

2. Fold in half and sew down the straight edge:

3. Create a hem along the curved edge by folding outwards and sew the zip along the top:

4. Put the lining into the crocheted watermelon and sew along the top edge to secure the lining in place:

5. Use green yarn to hide the edges of the zip.

Filed under: crochet, instructions, case, coin purse, crochet, crochet pattern, instructions, pattern, watermelon

Thread Butterfly

I saw the pattern for these little butterflies on Ravelry and had to give them a try – they were very easy and quick to make – the second one much faster than the first. The pattern gets you to make a sort of rippled flower that won’t lay flat and when you fold it in half it makes this wonderful butterfly shape. These are the only colours of crochet thread I have at the moment so I just made these two to try out the pattern – I think a couple would look really good added to a basic green hat for a baby or toddler. I used crochet thread I had lying around and a 2mm hook making the finished butterflies ~5cm (2″) across the widest part of the wings. If you want to give them a try the pattern is a pdf that can be downloaded for free from Ravelry called Butterfly Grace.

Filed under: crochet, butterfly, crochet, crochet pattern, easy, thread

Experiments with a lap loom

The internet is a wonderful thing. A few weeks ago I posted a photo of something made of yarn and asked if anyone knew how it had been created; within minutes lots of you wonderful people left links with ideas and it turned out to have been created by something called a hexagonal lap loom. You can buy these online but they are from America and I was too lazy to look for suppliers in the UK… And they were expensive… And ordering one would involve waiting for it to be delivered and I’m very impatient. So I decided to make my own and while I’m not sure how much I actually like the results it was easy and works brilliantly so here’s how I did it:

To make a loom like mine you will need some nails/tacks (maybe drawing pins or similar would work if you can manage to push them securely into the wood) a hammer and an old picture frame that is quite wide. Also a ruler and pen for marking where to put the nails.

Use your ruler to mark the centre point on each of the shorter sides of the frame. Draw a line from this point to the corner of the hole in the centre of the frame and continue in a straight line to the edge (as shown by the red line/arrow above). Repeat this for all four corners of the frame.

Now mark on where to put the nails. You will need one nail at each point of the hexagon (so that’s 6 in total) and then the actual number all the way around doesn’t matter – the important points to remember are that you need the same number of nails on opposite sides of the hexagon (nails should be opposite each other) and if you want your patterns to have the same height and width then all nails need to be equally spaced so measure the length of the sides and choose a spacing that will fit nails in evenly (it doesn’t have to be very exact – you can fudge it a bit as long as opposite sides have the same number of nails). As you can see on my loom I ended up with 11 nails along the long edges and 8 nails on each of the short edges all roughly 2cm apart but yours will be different depending on the dimensions of your photo frame.

Now you have your frame you need to choose your yarn and wind it around. I got instructions for winding from LapWeaving.Info which clearly show where to start and how to turn the loom. This step is very quick and easy once you get the hang of it and you can keep going around as many times as you like to make the piece thicker. To create the flower effect in the photo from my earlier post you will need 2 contrasting colours. In the first colour weave around as you are shown in the tutorial but only use every other nail:

Change to the second colour and wind around the nails not used the first time:

From the front it now looks like this (the white tape is to cover up the nail points that poked through!):

All that winding should only take a few minutes but now it’s time for the painstaking part – tying all the sections together. Again detailed instructions are available on LapWeaving.Info. It is very time-consuming and I’m still undecided if it’s worth all the effort! I guess it depends how much you like the results:

I finished off this place mat by crocheting around the outside a couple of times but I wasn’t sure I even liked it at all! The pink and green colours are what attracted me to the mystery photo in the first place but here I think they look a bit too bright and gaudy.

I didn’t want to waste my very first attempt (when the nails weren’t even and the flowers ended up looking stretched) so I cut it up to create some coasters with loose edges and I like these much more than the place mat for some reason:

I also had a go at a more subdued grey place mat:

But I still feel like it’s missing a certain something that I can’t quite put my mind on. What do you think?

Filed under: instructions, Not crochet, coaster, flower, hexagonal lap loom, instructions, loom, placemat, wool

Back in Business

Sorry for the break in transmission over the last few weeks folks – just after the last post my camera stopped working – I took it to pieces, blew out the dust and prodded the interior a bit but to no avail (it usually works for my pc). I tried using my phone camera but it’s pretty rubbish so I just had to give up for a while. Yesterday I acquired a shiny new camera that I can’t show you (what would I take the photo with) but it’s very nice and of course the very first thing I did was crochet a case for it. Just a very simple case in the style of the flower phone case in chunky wool with a loop and a giant button. Normal crocheting service will resume shortly.

Filed under: crochet, crochet