Recently I started a new hobby: making HAMA beads!
It's something I haven't done in many, many years. Not since I was a kid, actually! But one day, sitting in front of a couple of beads (I won't lie, they were my friend's niece's), I just started beading away. And it was so comforting, almost meditative. It reminded me a bit of doing jigsaw puzzles, actually. So I decided to lean into it, went out and bought my own kit.
The thing about beads, though, is that it's really nice to know what the final pattern should look like before you start — otherwise you'll end up moving beads around when you realise you actually needed one more in the top corner (Yes, I'm talking from experience). That's when I started looking for a tool to help me plan things out. I tried whatever was available online, but nothing quite fit my needs. Either it wasn't free, or the colour palette didn't match my actual beads, or something else was off. So I figured: why not just build my own? And so I did — and it's of course completely free for you to use too.
Please welcome PATRN! 🫧
It's a very simple website where you can build a pattern on a grid. You can toggle between dark and light mode, and pick colours from the standard Hama colour range. It works in the browser, but I mostly built it with iPad in mind, since that's what I use myself — so it also supports Apple Pencil, meaning you can rest your hand on the screen while you draw 💁♀️.
Oh, and it's not only for Hama bead patterns. Use it for cross stitch, knitting charts, whatever floats your boat. When you're done, just hit the export button and your pattern gets saved straight to your folder. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!