Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | A written crochet pattern, delivered as a PDF. The file itself is titled The Big-Mouth Fish Key Pouch. |
| What you make | A round, grumpy fish with a thick rolled lip, two white goggle eyes, four stubby feet and a bobble on its tail. Its mouth is the pouch opening. A cord runs through the fish from the tail bobble to the mouth, where your key hangs. |
| Finished size | About 10 cm (4 in) long, lip included, and about 10 cm (4 in) across at the widest, lying flat. |
| Fits | A car key fob, or a case of wireless earbuds. The mouth is about 6.5 cm (2½ in) wide inside; inside, the fish is about 10 cm (4 in) wide at its widest and 8 cm (3¼ in) deep. |
| How long it takes | About 3 hours. |
| Hook | 2.5 mm. A 2.0 mm makes a smaller, firmer fish — about 8 cm (3¼ in) long, the mouth about 5 cm (2 in) inside. |
| Yarn | 4-ply cotton, about a US sport weight, in three colours: a main colour, a lip colour, and white for the eyes. Any pair works — brown with a red lip, orange with yellow, green with salmon, pink with pale pink. |
| Yarn needed | About 26 g (65 yd) of the main colour, 5 g (15 yd) of the lip colour and 3 g (10 yd) of white — about 34 g (90 yd) in all. |
| Skill level | Advanced beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: a starting chain joined into a ring, joined rounds, increases and decreases, little chain feet worked into two rounds, and a lip worked onto the starting edge. |
| Techniques used | Starting with a chain joined into a ring, and with a magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one with a slip stitch · chain, slip stitch and single crochet · the single crochet increase and the invisible decrease · little feet made of chains and slip stitches, worked out of a stitch mid-round · joining a new colour onto an edge and working rounds from it · stuffing a small ball and closing it by decreasing · fitting safety eyes, and sewing parts on |
| Worked in | Joined rounds, with the yarn-under single crochet and the invisible decrease — both explained in the pattern, with what changes if you crochet the usual way. The starting chain of a round never counts as a stitch. Inside each foot the count back from the hook changes — the 2nd chain for the first toe, the 3rd for the other two — and the pattern says so where it happens. |
| The pouch | Twenty-two rounds, from the mouth end to the tail. It grows from 35 to 54 by round 7 — the widest it gets — holds for three rounds, then narrows in steps to 28, with plain rounds between. The tail end is flattened and sewn closed with its own tail, leaving a two-stitch gap for the cord. |
| The feet | Four: two worked into round 8 and two into round 22, the pair at the tail in line with the pair near the mouth. Each is a chain with three little toes of slip stitches, worked straight out of a single crochet, and each counts as the one stitch it grows from. |
| The lip | Worked onto the other side of the starting chain ring, in the lip colour: rounds of 35, then folded back over itself so it rolls into a thick rim round the mouth. Five rounds make a slim lip, six a fuller one, seven thicker still. |
| The tail bobble and cord | A small stuffed ball, closed by decreasing, with a 60-chain cord worked straight off it — more or fewer for a longer or shorter one. The cord goes in through the gap at the tail, so the bobble sits outside and the cord runs through the fish to the mouth. |
| The eyes | Two small white balls, each closed over a black safety eye and sewn onto the top of the fish, set wide apart. |
| Number of pieces | Four: the fish — pouch and lip, both worked from one ring of chains — the tail bobble with its cord, and two eyes. |
| Count checkpoints | Nine: 42 at the end of the pouch’s round 4, 54 at round 7, 54 again at round 9 (each foot counts as the stitch it sits on), 42 at round 13, 35 at round 16 and 28 at round 20; 35 at the end of the lip’s first round; 18 and 6 at rounds 3 and 8 of the tail bobble. |
| Sewing | A little. The tail end is sewn closed with the pouch’s own long tail, and the eyes are sewn on with theirs. The lip and the feet are crocheted on. |
| Lining | None. The fish is crochet throughout. The pattern has you hold the fabric up to a lamp and go down a hook size if light shows through, because an open fabric lets the corner of a key push through the side. |
| Also needed | A pair of black safety eyes, about 6 mm; about 1 g of fiberfill for the tail bobble, and a pinch for each eye if you like; a stitch marker; a yarn needle; scissors. |
| Pages | 20 |
| Printing | The instructions are real text, not pictures of text — so you can search them, copy them, enlarge them, or have them read aloud. |
| Terminology | US crochet terms |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written and your fish comes out a mirror image of the photos. The feet still line up in pairs, and the eyes are placed by eye. |
| Delivery | Download link on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Real crochet, captured while it was being made
You have learned to zoom in on a listing photo looking for stitches that don’t join up. You should — the shops selling patterns behind pictures that were never crocheted are real, and there are a lot of them.
So here is the unglamorous version: the pink pouch on its own in two hands, sewn closed at the tail with a little foot at each corner and no lip yet; the same pouch with its pale pink lip rolled back round the open mouth; and two white eyes, black safety eyes already in, held against the pouch to find their place. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The fish before its lip and eyes is the one to look at. It is a plain round bag with four stubby feet, two near the open end and two at the tail, and a small gap at the tail where the cord goes in.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated fish.
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you.
On this fish, you can see the count from the outside. Round 8 grows two little feet and round 22 two more, and the pair at the tail is meant to sit directly in line with the pair near the mouth. Each foot grows out of a single stitch and counts as that one stitch, so round 9 comes back to 54 — and the feet at the tail only land in line if every round in between came out right. So the pattern puts a checkpoint straight after the first pair, and three more as the tail narrows.
Counted twice means you can tell. No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and handing it to someone without an apology.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
Round 8 grows the first two feet, each one out of a single stitch. The box after round 9 gives you 54 — the same as before the feet — because each foot counts as the one stitch it sits on, and it tells you why that matters here: the feet at the tail only line up with these two if every round in between is right. This is page 11 of the 20 you get, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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