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 Sausage-Lip Key Pouch. |
| What you make | A cheeky little creature with a fat rolled lip for a mouth, and the mouth is the pocket: keys go in through the lips. It has two white eyes with plastic pupils, four stubby limbs, a pigtail either side of its head and a filled heart on top. A strap runs from the heart down through the head and hangs out of the mouth as a loop. |
| Finished size | About 8 cm (3¼ in) wide and 11 cm (4¼ in) tall, plus about 5 cm (2 in) of heart and pigtails on top. |
| Fits | A car key fob, a pair of earbuds or a few house keys. Inside it is about 7 cm (2¾ in) wide and 9 cm (3½ in) deep, and the lips open about 7 cm (2¾ in) wide. |
| How long it takes | About 2½ hours. |
| Hook | 4.0 mm. |
| Yarn | DK cotton — the pattern’s recommendation for this hook — in four colours: a main colour, a mouth colour, a heart colour, and white for the eyes. |
| Yarn needed | About 26 g (55 yd) of the main colour, 6 g (15 yd) of the mouth colour, 7 g (15 yd) of the heart colour and 1 g (5 yd) of white — about 40 g (90 yd) in all. |
| Skill level | Advanced beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: joined rounds, a chain-started oval, a chain-bridged opening, invisible decreases, and some tying, gluing and knotting. |
| Techniques used | Starting on a chain, into one loop of each chain, and working back along both sides · starting 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 · leaving an opening with a bridge of chains, and working into the chains on the next round · picking up stitches round an opening · joining two small circles into one round · tying limbs on with their own tails · gluing on eyes with hot-melt glue · adding tied-on hair |
| 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 never counts as a stitch, and the first stitch of every round goes into the stitch you joined into; the pattern says why. |
| The pouch | A flat oval started on seven chains — 14, 20, 26 stitches — then straight up at 26. Round 15 works thirteen stitches, then chains thirteen across the other thirteen and skips them, which leaves the mouth under the chains; round 16 works into the chains. Rounds 19 to 21 close the top: 20, 14, 7. If the pouch looks short for your key before round 15, the pattern has you add a plain round or two. |
| The lip | Four rounds in the mouth colour, picked up round the opening — thirteen along each side and a stitch at each corner, placed wherever the turn comes out smooth — then rolled outwards into a fat lip. |
| The limbs | Four, each a chain with a tiny foot at the end, made first. Two are tied on as legs after round 5 and two as arms after round 14, each by its own two tails, knotted inside. |
| The heart and strap | Two little lobes joined into one round and decreased to a point, filled with snipped ends of the main colour as it closes. A 50-chain strap is taken up through the heart with a needle, knotted, and the heart closed round it; the strap’s loop is then pushed in at the top of the head and out through the mouth. |
| The face and hair | Two white eyes, a single round each, glued side by side above the mouth, with a plastic pupil glued in the middle of each. The pigtails are two bunches of the heart colour pulled through beside the heart, then braided or tied. |
| Number of pieces | Nine, plus the hair: the pouch with its lip, four limbs, the heart, the strap and two eyes. |
| Count checkpoints | Five: 26 at the end of the pouch’s round 3 and 14 at round 20; 30 at the end of the lip’s round 2; 10 at the end of a heart lobe’s round 2; 10 at the end of the heart’s round 7. |
| Sewing and glue | Very little sewing. The limbs are tied on with their own tails. The strap is taken up through the heart with a needle and knotted, and the heart is closed with its own tail. The eyes and pupils are fixed with hot-melt glue. |
| Stuffing | The heart only, with snipped ends of the main-colour yarn. |
| Lining | None. The pouch is crochet throughout, and the pattern asks for a firm fabric, because a key corner works through a loose one. |
| Also needed | Two plastic pupils; hot-melt glue — a glue gun, or a glue stick and a lighter; two or three stitch markers; a yarn needle; scissors; tweezers if you like, for placing the pupils. |
| Pages | 21 |
| 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: every round has the same stitches and the same count, you are simply working in the other direction. The limbs, eyes and hair are placed by counting or by eye, and work the same either way round. |
| 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 green pouch held on its side, still open at the top, a row of chains arching across one edge where the mouth will be and the hook still in the work; the pouch laid flat with its legs and arms tied on and its top closed, the mouth open under a band of stitches with a pink marker at each corner; and the pouch in a palm with its orange lip picked up round the mouth and rolled outwards. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The mouth before its lip is the one to look at. It is a row of thirteen chains bridging a gap in the side of the pouch, with the next round worked across them.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated pouch.
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 pouch, that place is the lip’s first round. It isn’t worked into the stitches of a round, the way everything before it is: it is picked up round the opening — thirteen along the bottom edge, thirteen along the top, and one stitch at each corner, put wherever the turn comes out smooth. Nothing marks where those corner stitches go, and the pattern says so. So the lip gets its own checkpoint after round 2, before you roll it, while there are two short rounds to look at rather than four.
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.
That box is the check on the lip before it is rolled. Round 1 is picked up round the opening, with a stitch at each corner placed by eye, and round 2 adds one more at each corner. So the box gives you the number you should have, 30, and what it is made of: thirteen along each side and two at each corner. This is page 15 of the 21 you get, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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