I’m a pod cast junky. There, I admit it. I love to listen to them while I’m making stuff. But lately I’ve been bummed out because my headphones are so uncomfortable to wear. Unfortunately, I can’t wear ear buds at all, and trust me I’ve tried. So I have to wear clunky head phones instead.
The problem I usually have with headphones are the cheep foam covers that fit around the ear pieces. These are always the first thing to go on headphones. In the case of this particular pair, the foam covers went years ago so I bought replacement covers at some big box store that ended up being way too big and ill-fitting. But I used them for a long time, until finally this morning I had had enough and I made custom crochet covers for them.
This is not the first time I’ve fixed headphones in this way. The first time I did it was in 2008. We were barely into our Peace Corps service and still living with our host family. Somehow the foam covers of the headphones that I brought from the US had completely disintegrated by month two of life in Morocco. Sure I could have requested that a new pair be shipped to me in my next care package, or even bought some in Morocco, but instead I chose the DIY route and crocheted myself a new pair of covers. To my delight they worked great!
About one year after later while we were in Rabat for our mid service medical exams, I noticed that one of my volunteer friends, Dan, was having the same problem with his headphones. Of course I just happened to have some yarn and a crochet hook on me at the time (who travels without these things?), so while he wasn’t looking I quickly made him a home-made pair too. To my surprise, he was still using them one year later when we finished our service in November, 2010!
So this is my third time making headphone covers. They are really easy to make. Mine are just made by crocheting single crochet in the round in the general shape of the headphones until they are the appropriate size (most headphones are not perfect circles, so you’ll want to use your specific pair as a guide and get your crochet cover to match up as closely as possible). Then I crochet one or two rounds more without increasing and the final round is a double crochet/single chain pattern that you weave a piece of yarn into so as to synch the cover over the headphone. Easy!
This is not a glamorous project, but it is practical. There are a lot of instances where something minor brakes or wears out on something that we use often. Though we are capable of figuring out a way of repairing or replacing the worn/broken component, we tend to take the easy way out and just throw it away and buy a new whats-it.
Do you have a story about a time you used your crochet skills (or sewing, or knitting, or crafting, or woodworking skills, etc) to bring something broken back to life? I’d love to hear them! Leave a comment below or on the zween facebook page.
Happy crafting!
zween 