So for the next installment of Pinned it... I decided to do something other than a recipe. I know, it's shocking. What really happened is that I needed a new keychain. Did you know that it is darn near impossible to find a simple keychain anymore?! Google doesn't even recognize it as a word! KEYCHAIN! Take that, little red squiggly line! [wow, that was really random.]
Anyway....
So I was looking everywhere for a keychain. I had one of those cute bling-y ones that was a purple ombre, but the gems started falling off and with as much as Ellie loves to steal my keys, I just didn't think it was cute enough to be worth the risk of choking/bowel perforation/sparkly poop. But I couldn't find any others. I guess that's not totally true - I did find some. But they all had sports teams on them. And I'm just not that big of a sports fan. So I'm walking around AC Moore looking for a keychain and found paracord instead. Everyone's seen those bracelets that were SO popular despite being ridiculously ugly and (let's be honest here) not terribly functional. But for some reason I thought it might make a nice keychain. So I bought some in purple and a coordinating pattern and off I went to find a tutorial to save me the trouble of figuring out on my own. And I came across this...
Paracord Keychain! I like a loop in my keychains so that I can stick a finger or two through it, so that's why I picked this one instead of the millions of others that are just long straight braids.
First of all, the pin itself is terrible. It takes you to a site with a 'gallery' of different paracord projects. You have to page all the way to the end before you find the keychain one and then it directs you to a different website altogether for the actual instructions! Pins like that drive me nuts. The website with the instructions has a majority of the text in another language, but luckily that doesn't affect the actual tutorial instructions.
I modified this one quite a bit, so let me outline for you what I did. First, I didn't use the third string of 'micro cord.' I hadn't bought it and I wasn't going to run out and find some, so I just left it out. It's just for added decoration anyway. Second, I made it one giant loop rather than just a little tiny loop at the end. Aside from that, I followed the instructions. And I didn't have a lighter on hand, so I used a match (or 6) to melt the ends of the cord.
I thought it was really clever how they formed the loop with the two tail ends and joined them together so that there were no actual knots around the keyring. Maybe that's how they make the bracelets, I don't know, but I wouldn't have thought of it on my own so I was glad to have the tutorial there to help me. To make my modification, I just braided down one strand of the loop all the way around until I got back up to the top.
Now here's where the tutorial made me frustrated. It had no pictures, no instructions, no suggestions, nothing on how to finish the project. So that part I had to make up on my own. When I got back up to the top, I just tied a single over-hand knot (like the kind you start your shoelaces with) on the inside of the loop. Then I clipped the ends really short and melted them to the inside of the loop.
I really like how this turned out. We'll see how it holds up over time, but so far it has survived being 'toy of the night' for a 14 month old, so that's pretty good. Ellie really likes it - so much so that I think I'm going to have to make another one just for her. Don't worry, I'll make it a small enough loop that it won't be a strangulation hazard :-)
Final Verdict: The finished product is great! The pin itself is only so-so. But I couldn't have figured out how to get started properly without it, so that's why it made my loved it list.
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