Monday, 18 August 2014


If you have children of any description in your life, this particular phenomenon will not have passed you by.  There's something irresistible about the combination of children of a certain age and making things for the wrist; when I was at school, it was plaiting and knotting bits of embroidery thread to make sometimes beautiful friendship bands.  Anyway, plaiting and knotting is too old school for today's modern 7 year old on the go, so the LOOM BAND, a small elastic band that looks like something you used on your braces at night to keep your teeth in place, has been developed.

Basically, when making a loom band bracelet, you are making a chain of elastics in a herringbone pattern.  It's not hard, just a bit, well, dull and repetitive.  During this tutorial, imagine your loving child or children gazing at you in adoration and admiration.  They will, in no way, be bored, shouting at you that you are doing it wrong or whining that they want to watch CBeebies instead.


1. Buy a packet of three thousand bands for about a pound.  Immediately lose at least half of them under the sofa, in between the seats in the car, inside the washing machine.

2. Google "how to make a loom band", sit through a twenty minute YouTube video of a 9 year old American girl whizzing away.  Cry quietly.

3. Put an elastic band over your left hand thumb and forefinger.  Remove, put in twist, replace, ping elastic band across room, repeat.

4. Put a second loom band over the first, then pull the first over the second, gaze in awe at what you've just done, celebrate with small glass of wine.

5. Repeat until you have a chain of ten or so elastic bands dangling between your left thumb and forefinger.

6. Lose all feeling in the tips of your left thumb and forefinger.

7. Attempt to transfer loom band to other hand.  Ping whole thing across the room. Finish glass of wine, pour another.

8. Finally get loom band onto right hand, and continue to make the chain until it's about 25 elastics long.  Measure it against child's wrist.

9. Spend ten minutes fitting the hook to both ends.  Place lovingly on child's wrist.  Wait for praise or even thanks.

10. Finish bottle of wine.

My husband has just taught our eldest daughter how to make a loom band; I have shown her time and time again, but it's only when he did it that it took.  Weasels the pair of them.

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