Free Pattern Friday: Blue Electric Angels Bracelet

We be light, we be life, we be fire

We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind

we dance heaven!

Come be we and be free!

We be blue electric angels.

— Anonymous spam mail, source unknown

The above is from the great fantasy book A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin, copyright 2009. If you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s one of my favorite urban fantasy books. Matthew Swift and the Blue Electric Angels are awesome and the story is a very good read (as are the rest of the books, although I still haven’t gotten a chance to read the latest one! Sad.)

Anyway, since I liked the Blue Electric Angels so much, I wanted to make something as a subtle tribute to them. Something that would look cool without screaming…er…semi-obscure geekdom.

So, the Blue Electric Angels Bracelet was born. It reminds me of telephone lines and little flares of blue electric power.

And it’s also the reintroduction of Free Pattern Friday! Coolness all around!

I’ve provided a photo tutorial for this project, because it might be just a little confusing. Shouldn’t be, but just in case! (And forgive me if some of the photos aren’t super great, my camera wasn’t being nice 100% of the time.)

If you spot any errors or have any problems, please let me know!

Blue Electric Angels Bracelet

For personal and non-profit use only please. Do not sell this pattern or any items made by it.

Project Type: Crochet

Skill Level: Easy-Moderate

Materials Needed:

A tiny bit of sock yarn in brilliant blue (recommended: Colinette Jitterbug in Salty Dog)
Size US C crochet hook
Yarn needle
Button
Scissors

Pattern:

The pattern is worked in multiples of 5 single crochet (sc) repeats with 4 sc on either side of the bracelet for the clasp/button. So when you do your foundation chain, you need to make sure you have a multiple of 5 (such as 25, 30, 35, etc), 8 (for the ends) and then 1 for the turning chain. I say this so that you can customize the size of your bracelet. I have freakishly small wrists so I chained 34– 25 for the pattern repeats, 8 for the ends and then 1 for the turning chain! This made the chain fit somewhat snugly against my wrist, but not too loose or too tight. Make sense?
Sc into the second chain from the hook, sc into the next 3 chains, at the fourth chain do 4sc into the same chain. Like this:
Continue to sc 4 and then 4sc in a single space across to the last chain but don’t work the last chain yet. Your bracelet will look all curly, that’s fine!
In this chain (the final chain) do 3 sc into that space. What this does is turn the bracelet because we are going to be working in rounds, not back and forth!
Now you are going to work on the other side of the chain, opposite the side you just worked! You can see that here.
Continue doing what you did on the other side, doing 4 sc and then 4sc in a single space, only put the 4 sc in the hole you will see in the chain– where your previous row’s of 4sc are. It’ll look like this hole here:
Doing great! Now at the very last chain you are going to sc into that chain then chain 4 (or some size that is smaller than your button– you want it to be smaller than your button so it won’t stretch out of shape too easily, but not so small you can’t get the button through it!) You will then crochet into the original sc you made on the side of the bracelet you started with.
Okay, now chain 3 but this time you will slip stitch into the same sc you just made above. This creates a little picot.
Then chain 4 and sc into the second sc in your 4sc space (the space that is the lump with the hole in it), chain 3 and then sc into the next sc space. This creates another little picot at the top of the hole. See?
Continue doing this across until you reach the last sc in the row. (This is the spot where you did 3sc in the instruction line 4 above. You don’t want to sc into the middle of that sc cluster, just the first one for right now.) For this you will do what you did when you turned the bracelet just before– sc into the space, chain 3 and slip stitch into the same space you just did a sc into. Now sc into the space that is the middle of that sc 3 and then sc into the next space, chain 3 and slip stitch again.
Continue to repeat what you did on the other side– chain 4, sc into the second sc of the 4sc cluster, chain 3 and sc into the next stitch of the 4sc cluster.
When you reach the last stitch of this side, you’re going to sc into it, chain 3 and then slip stitch into that same space. This is the final time you do it! Bind off your crochet and weave in the end. This is how your bracelet will look:
On the other side of the bracelet (the side without the loop) stitch on your button. Before you weave in that end, I would try it on for size and move the button around if needed to make it tighter or looser. You can also wet block the bracelet if you want to in order to make the holes and picots stand out more, but I didn’t. I actually cheated just a bit and stretched the holes out by wiggling a pencil inside the center holes to stretch them a bit. They opened up nicely– it just shifted the stitches a bit– and it hasn’t slipped back yet.
And you’re all done! Put your bracelet on and strut!