rroOOAArr

Pretty scary isn't he! Pattern is norberta from knitty. At one point he was actually starting to look a bit frightening, so in the interests of not giving its owner nightmares, I left off the fangs and added a comedy felt tongue instead. The intended recipient hasn't actually been born yet so the eyes are embroidered on to improve batterability. This was the trickiest bit... I am no expert at embroidery and made a test swatch of eyes before attempting them on the actual toy. (I then left this around the lounge in unexpected places to scare people). From this swatch I learned that it's really worth spending 20p on a couple of skeins of proper embroidery thread rather than attempting to embroider with leftover scraps of sock yarn; it just stands out better against a woolly background.

Many would be put off this pattern by the amount of sewing up involved, but I didn't really mind that. It's nice to see the thing slowly taking shape. Although I would say that this was made unnecessarily tricky by my choice of boucle yarn.




It's made with two strands of yarn held throughout, and two different boucle yarns for the green bits. I thought this would make it look a bit more scaly but in retrospect just turning it purl side out, as suggested in the pattern, would have done the job with a lot less hassle.

Some things that I have learned are well-nigh impossible with boucle yarn:

• Frogging


• Seaming


• Shaping


• Pretty much making anything that isn't a garter stitch scarf

It's all my sister's fault for describing Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan as ideal cuddly dragon yarn. It does feel nice and soft though so I can kind of see her point. The rest is all leftover bits and bobs of yarn from the cupboard though, so it was a nice cheap project. And thanks to Catr for the loan of felt for the tongue!