Knit Olympic Rings Double as a Stacked Bracelet

I wanted to knit a little something to celebrate the Olympic Games, so I came up with the idea to knit Olympic rings, since they are an icon of the Games that can come out every two years.

As I was thinking about how I would do it, it occurred to me that if I made the rings the right size they could also be used as a giant stacked cuff bracelet.

I don’t know if this idea was brilliant or crazy, but I like the way it turned out and am totally going to make more bracelets this way with different colors and textures of yarn in the future.

This is more of an explanation than a pattern, because it’s super simple. You’ll need a small amount of medium-weight yarn in each of the ring colors –blue, yellow, black, green and red — and two size 8 US/5 mm double-pointed knitting needles or one circular needle.

The rings are each made of five-stitch I-cord: cast on 5, knit 1 row, *slide the stitches to the opposite end of the needle without turning the work, then knit 1 row. Repeat from * until ring is desired size. Bind off, leaving a tail to sew the ends together.

Make one ring of each color, then sew the strips into rings as you sew them together in the order of the Olympic rings: blue, yellow, black, green and red.

Arrange alternating up and down to display, or stack the rings on top of each other to wear as a bracelet.

This is a super quick, easy and fun project that I hope you’ll try, and if you do I’d love to hear what you think!

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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