Norse Cords

Well school has started by the time this post will go up, but as I write it, graduation weekend is only two days away. One of the many roles my husband plays at his high school is to be Norse Chief of the Norsemen, a spirit group of rowdy young men who cheer at games. They are most recognizable because of their blue and white striped overalls, and the noise...

As I usually attend each game that he does, and have watched over them myself occasionally, as I maintain my Keeping Children Safe certification, some have affectionally called me the Norse mom. It's not a title I take lightly, and I do try to think ahead and about them like their moms might.

This year one of the boys asked me via Instagram chat (who knew it had a chat?) if I would make Norsemen cords for graduation. If you haven't been to a high school graduation in a while, you might not know that various students get pieces of flair that they can add to the standard cap and gown, in the form of colored cords. This is mostly honor societies and things of that nature. I smiled at the thought, as it is both totally in the style of the Norsemen to be a bit silly and to poke a little good natured fun at the prestigious cords of which so many are so proud.

Thumb showing the back side of the cord, front below it.

Sure I could totally just make long chains of blue and white, but that would both look more like a ribbon when done than a cord and wasnt really what I was thinking would be coolest. Luckily a little searching and I came up with the perfect solution.

A crochet i-cord. Yeah I'd never heard of such a thing. I followed the instructions and video from the blog PlanetJune which is in only one color. With a little playing I found that switching colors each row created a really nice striped zig zag look which was cord shaped and totally perfect for my needs. I did also try making larger stripes of color but then it created long strings of yarn marching up the back side which was not too good looking.

It did make it a bit slower going than you might think but each cord only took me about 2 hours to make. They are about 70 inches long and each end has two rows of white to start and end the cords. I did this to give a nice sort of visual end to the cords.

Once I had all five made, one for each senior Norsemen, I also added on tassels to the ends as is a pretty standard style. These really made me smile, and it was nice to surprise the rest of the boys with a little symbol of their time together.

Finished cords.

Difficulty: Easy
Time to complete: 2 hours each