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I have been crocheting bracelets
Jun. 17th, 2004 01:01 amYeah, I crochet too. Most medical alert bracelets are mildly ugly; some are heavy chain and quite ugly. While one wants a medical alert bracelet to catch attention when needed, I personally don't want to have it always catching attention for its sheer ugliness. So I decided to string beads on various things and see what works for bracelets. There are several different kinds of medical alert tags/charms/plaques/bars/things-that-fasten-on-to-other-things. I have two of the lightweight charms, cheap thin base metal on one side and detailed teensy engraved plastic on the other, one smooth stainless steel thing made to slide on a strap somewhat the size and width of a watch strap (the strap it came with is cheap vinyl imitating snakeskin only in blue, fastened with way too much velcro which irritates the wrist), and one standard bracelet - heavy silver-plated chain, alert tag with a hole in each end, attached into middle of chain, and hard-to-manage fastener.
So I tried crocheting with lamé filament, which works pretty well; I strung a whole bunch of brown-toned glass beads of various sizes and included a bead in almost every stitch, and stuck one of the little alert charms in there as just another bead. But there has to be some kind of fastener; I crocheted a little bit of gold colored elastic cord between the two ends. So it stretches a bit to get over my hand, and is still a bit loose on my wrist, but not quite loose enough to fall off. I don't like really loose bracelets; anything that might get caught on part of the bike isn't a good idea in my opinion. Then I thought I'd try perle cotton, because it's softer than lame filament but still fairly strong; I did the same thing with beads and an alert charm. Had to do the same thing with the elastic to make it not so loose it would slip off. The perle cotton is soft, but it doesn't look as jewelry-like as the filament does. I also tried making a small bracelet without a tag, out of some leftover overdyed 6-strand cotton floss; that's strong, and the variegations in it look better than the solid color perle cotton - with glass beads, it has quite a hippie look to it. I imagine hemp cord would be similar; I may try that. Hemp is supposed to be quite strong.
I wanted to crochet using the elastic cord as my yarn, but it's too heavy to string beads onto. And I tried making a loop of some heavy cord, and crocheting some crochet cotton around the loop; however, it's nearly impossible to make the ends of the loop of elastic stay together when pulled, and it IS impossible to keep the fabric cover of the cord from fraying and sticking out between the beads and stuff. So I pulled that experiment apart again, to re-use the beads. Maybe with special equipment I could do a really good crimp on the ends of the elastic; I am going to ask a friend who builds rabbit cages if I can borrow a few J-clips and her J-clip squeezer, and see if that would serve as a good crimp.
So far, I like the filament one best, and a friend admired it.
More experiments to come. I want to find a cheap source for the alert charms; they don't have to have nearly as much verbiage on them as I have on mine, and many people just get them saying "see wallet card." I might try making a few bracelets with that kind of generic tag and see if anyone might buy them.
So I tried crocheting with lamé filament, which works pretty well; I strung a whole bunch of brown-toned glass beads of various sizes and included a bead in almost every stitch, and stuck one of the little alert charms in there as just another bead. But there has to be some kind of fastener; I crocheted a little bit of gold colored elastic cord between the two ends. So it stretches a bit to get over my hand, and is still a bit loose on my wrist, but not quite loose enough to fall off. I don't like really loose bracelets; anything that might get caught on part of the bike isn't a good idea in my opinion. Then I thought I'd try perle cotton, because it's softer than lame filament but still fairly strong; I did the same thing with beads and an alert charm. Had to do the same thing with the elastic to make it not so loose it would slip off. The perle cotton is soft, but it doesn't look as jewelry-like as the filament does. I also tried making a small bracelet without a tag, out of some leftover overdyed 6-strand cotton floss; that's strong, and the variegations in it look better than the solid color perle cotton - with glass beads, it has quite a hippie look to it. I imagine hemp cord would be similar; I may try that. Hemp is supposed to be quite strong.
I wanted to crochet using the elastic cord as my yarn, but it's too heavy to string beads onto. And I tried making a loop of some heavy cord, and crocheting some crochet cotton around the loop; however, it's nearly impossible to make the ends of the loop of elastic stay together when pulled, and it IS impossible to keep the fabric cover of the cord from fraying and sticking out between the beads and stuff. So I pulled that experiment apart again, to re-use the beads. Maybe with special equipment I could do a really good crimp on the ends of the elastic; I am going to ask a friend who builds rabbit cages if I can borrow a few J-clips and her J-clip squeezer, and see if that would serve as a good crimp.
So far, I like the filament one best, and a friend admired it.
More experiments to come. I want to find a cheap source for the alert charms; they don't have to have nearly as much verbiage on them as I have on mine, and many people just get them saying "see wallet card." I might try making a few bracelets with that kind of generic tag and see if anyone might buy them.
