Pattern Coming Soon

A couple summers ago, I was at a county fair, it it was ridiculously hot out. I was dressed sensibly in shorts and a tank top. (I was wearing sneakers. I never wear sandals when I'm going to be doing a lot of walking.) I had my shoulder-length hair in a ponytail.

We perused the products pavilions. They're air conditioned.  

This is where I first stumbled across the Qwik Bun. The people in the booth put up my hair, and it was nice to get it off my neck. Of course I purchased one.  

And of course after I took the thing out later (after we left the fair), I couldn't figure out how to make the thing work again. Ah well.  

But it was summer. And my hair was long. Ponytails get old quick. So, I spent some time playing with the thing. I'm not sure how long it took, but after a while I figured out how to get my hair up in it. Soon, it was the easiest thing for me to do.  

I'm not sure how long after my knitter brain kicked in. I figured there had to be a way to make a knit version.  

That slit in the middle? A really long one-row buttonhole. With a few increases at the start and decreases at the end, it makes a pretty convincing oval.  

In the end it does the job.  

The hardest part was figuring out how to get wire around the edges. One of these days I'll figure out a good way to do it. For now, what I do is cut a length of wire and encase it in duct tape.  

I've been toying with the idea of sharing the pattern. (I was going to do that today, but I haven't had the time to get things written up.) So, consider this a coming soon post. Coming soon: the pattern for this bun thing I reverse engineered.  

Although, if anyone knows how to work with wire, I could use some advice. Does anyone know a better way to get a loop of wire that stays as a loop without resorting to duct tape?