I love to cycle seat cover

Living in the bicycle-friendly city of Ghent, my bike is my main means of transport to get from one place to the other. I cycle every day. That’s why I thought I’d pimp my – very nice and purple – ride and crown myself Queen of the road.

And not only that, of course. I found a very lovely pattern for a bicycle seat cover on Ravelry. The person who designed it needed it to keep her seat from getting too hot in summer. A very good reason, of course, but – living in Belgium where it tends to rain quite a lot – I thought I could use one to keep my seat dry. It would certainly save me from some embarrassing moments. I’ve walked around with odd wet spots on my trousers more often than I would have liked.

It had been a while since I had crocheted something, but it’s like riding a bicycle – you never forget.

What I liked

The pattern is easy to crochet and fairly straight-forward. I got confused once, but I think I decided to do the right thing in the end.

Rough patches

For the side of the cover, the pattern says to ‘work 115 sc evenly spaced, placing more sts along wide curves’. I didn’t quite know where to start increasing at that point, but I did it as follows: starting in a bottom corner (left corner for left-handed people, right corner for right-handed people) sc 27 st, 2sc in next 5st, sc in next 32 st, 2sc in next 5 st, sc in next 27 st, sc in 9 st at bottom of your work (115st).
There were a lot of loose ends to weave in. I think the weaving in took more time than actually crocheting the thing. Part of it is my fault, since the pattern said to ‘carry the tail of the first colour through one stitch, when changing colours’. Still, a lot of loose ends.

So, it is finished now. And now I’m a bit afraid to actually use it. I’m scared that it’ll get stolen right away. And I also discovered that it’s slighty too small for my bicycle seat (which is bigger than your average seat, so no worries when you’d like to have one, it’ll fit!).

I think that problem can be solved by just adding an extra row to the side. But I’ve been thinking, maybe I should give it to my mom. Sure, the colours match my bike perfectly, but I think it’ll be more thief-proof when it’s on her bike. What do you think?

Materials used