One finished item

This was one (of the two) "critters" I made over break. I used a pattern from Dawn Toussaint, called Hermione the Unicorn (I think the pattern can be downloaded free from that link; it's also on Ravelry).

I made mine just a little different - the fact, in particular.

And I named mine Bluebell.



She looks a lot different from the My Little Pony unicorns. (Well, maybe she's a baby or toddler unicorn; her proportions are more like that.) One thing is that her horn (yes, I know it looks like an upside down ice cream cone on her head, but it's a unicorn horn) is different colored from her body - the MLP unicorns have the horn and body color the same. (I wonder now, how the breakdown is in the representations of unicorns: horn and body same color vs. horn and body different color? I think CS Lewis once described a unicorn character as being white with a sapphire-blue horn....)

The pattern was pretty straightforward - the two unusual things are the "ruffle" (shell stitch - it's just double-crochets) around each hoof, and then the "ruffle" worked around the neck and horn (Those are actually kind of a pain to do as you are working them INTO the finished fabric. I think if I were doing the pattern again I'd do them separately and then sew them on).

One neat thing about this pattern? You make up all the "appendages" (legs, ears, horn) first, and then crochet them "into" the head or body as you are working the head and body - so you wind up with a finished unicorn all in one piece and no sewing-up to do. (In a way, it's kind of like the knitting patterns for toys that Annita Wilschut makes (like Joris), where all the pieces are knit together in one. It's a little more fiddly but there's something I find oddly pleasing about making a toy that way.)

Another photo:

I like how the face came out on her. I wasn't prepared to at first and I fussed with the eyes a lot before I finally put the lock-washers on. (One drawback to the "safety" eyes is that if you get them installed wrong, you can't fix them. And also, they aren't TRULY "safe for children" on a knitted or crocheted item, they still could be pulled out. If I were crocheting a baby toy I'd embroider the eyes.)



The eyes have little felt backs (the original pattern did too, a different color) and the pattern had the  little French-knot freckles. This photo might show them better:



I added more face detail - eyelashes and a mouth - than the original had.

Most of the yarn I used were leftovers of Caron Simply Soft I had hanging around at my parents' house but the mane and tail yarn were a Red Heart "kid" yarn (I forget what line) I bought specifically.