Not yet craft-tested. The stitch counts below are internally consistent and the size is derived from stitch mechanics, but nobody has worked this charm and measured it. Treat the numbers as proportions and check them against your own swatch.
What this is
A small stuffed ball hung from a split ring, worked in one continuous spiral so there is no seam and no join to unravel. It finishes about 4.5 cm across and weighs about 9 g before the ring — light enough not to drag a set of keys sideways, small enough to work in an evening.
Before you start
Work tightly. A charm this size spends its life being squeezed by keys and pockets, so the fabric has to be dense enough that the filling cannot work its way out between the stitches. If you can see filling through the fabric at arm’s length, go down a hook size and begin again.
Cotton or a cotton blend holds up better here than a soft acrylic, which pills where it rubs against the ring and the keys.
How the piece is built
Everything is worked in continuous rounds: do not join, do not turn, and mark the first stitch of every round.
- Round 1 — 6 sc into a magic ring. Pull the ring closed. (6)
- Round 2 — 2 sc in each stitch around. (12)
- Round 3 — [1 sc, 2 sc in next stitch] 6 times. (18)
- Round 4 — [2 sc, 2 sc in next stitch] 6 times. (24)
- Round 5 — [3 sc, 2 sc in next stitch] 6 times. (30)
- Rounds 6–9 — 1 sc in each stitch around, four plain rounds. (30)
- Round 10 — [3 sc, sc2tog] 6 times. (24)
- Round 11 — [2 sc, sc2tog] 6 times. (18)
- Round 12 — [1 sc, sc2tog] 6 times. (12). Stuff firmly but not hard: over-stuffing shows the backs of the stitches and makes the sphere square.
- Round 13 — sc2tog 6 times. (6). Fasten off leaving a 20 cm tail, thread the tail through the last six stitches and pull closed.
Hanging it from the ring
The ring has to be threaded onto the loop before the loop is closed, because a solid split ring cannot be added to a finished chain afterwards.
- Join the yarn to the closing round, or use the fastening-off tail.
- Chain 7. Pass the working loop through the split ring, so the chain will hang from it.
- Slip stitch back along the chain (6 sl st), then slip stitch into the round you joined to. That makes a doubled loop that will not stretch open.
- Fasten off and weave the ends into the body of the charm, never into the loop itself. A knot inside the loop is the part that fails first.
What to check before you trust it
- Tug the loop hard. If the ring moves more than a millimetre inside the chain, make the loop 9 chains instead of 7 so it sits double-thick.
- Squeeze the body. If filling shows through, the hook was too large for the yarn, not the other way round.
- Weigh it. Much above 20 g and a charm on a single split ring starts to sit badly in a pocket; at that weight it belongs on a bag zip rather than a keyring.
What is still missing from this guide
- No one has worked it, so the finished size and weight are derived, not measured.
- No carry test: nothing here has been on a keyring for a month to see how the ring, the yarn and the filling wear.
- No yarn-substitution figures; the yardage given is for the named yarn only.
Safety
A keyring charm is not a toy. Loops and filling can come loose with use, so keep this away from babies and children under three, and check the loop whenever you handle your keys.