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Protective, cute, and only marginally useless.

Materials: Red Heart acryllic yarn. Size 8 bamboo needles. Size 8 DPNs. Two buttons. Smaller amount of contrasting worsted-weight yarn. Thread. Embroidery and sewing needles.

Time: Several hours distributed over several months.

Cost: $5

After seeing these crocheted critter cozies for sale, I was struck by a wave of "hey, I can do that for cheaper!" inspiration. I'm not particularly neurotic about keeping my seldom-used cell phone in pristine condition, but I do have a tendency to drop things, and putting it in some sort of cover would avoid the scratch factor.

Knitting, I decided, would work just as well or even better than crochet (which I don't really know) because of its inherent stretchiness, and keep the phone snugly in place without the trouble of a secured top flap. So, because I am too lazy to bother with swatching for a project so small, I took a cue from the dimensions listed over at the knitting pretty cell phone cozy instructions. 11 stitches wide? Sounds good to me.

I cast on two stitches from two separate strands of yarn, because I wanted to work on both of the ears at the same time. I then made symmetrical increases on each of those stitches to make two short, stubby, and triangular ears that were 5 stitches wide each. Then, I dropped one of the strands of yarn that I was working with and continued across with a single strand to bind them together, sticking an extra stitch in the middle. That left me with a row of 11 stitches, which I worked in garter stitch (oh, the excitement!) until it looked roughly twice the length of my phone.

I then broke out the DPNs and made two three-stitch-wide, one-inch-long i-cords to act as the cozy's arms. I kind of suck at i-cord, so the finished arms curved up a little bit. This is what gives your cozy personality.

This is perhaps the easiest finishing job that you'll ever have. I wove in all of the loose ends and stitched up each side, stitching in the arms as I did it, and making sure that I matched the back and front so that the ears stuck out over the top. I then rummaged through my sewing notions drawer and found two slightly missized brown buttons ostensibly belonging to some shirt or other, and securely attached those to the front with a regular needle and thread. After some experimentation with other kinds of thread and yarn, I found that a contrasting color of worsted-weight yarn was the best for the mouth and nose, so I sewed that on using an embroidery needle.

I'm quite satisfied with the form and functionality of the original product, although the ears are a little sloppy and it stretched out more than I expected. I'm thinking about making another version with size 7 needles and 10 stitches across, which should hold the phone more snugly. But on the plus side, I positioned the eyes and mouth to be just about behind the outer LCD panel of my phone, which flashes all sorts of different colors when someone calls and makes the whole thing look like the cell cozy from beyond the grave.

freaking cute! i just scoured the sale bins at hancock to bulk up my stash. now i know what to do with all that cutesy baby yarn! thanks so much for making the pattern for the novices like myself. cheers!

Addendum: I think that baby yarn, or anything smaller than worsted weight, would be great for this. My cozy isn't snug enough to stay on my phone anymore, so I think I'm going to whip up another one sometime at a smaller gauge.