Dragon
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
-J.R.R. Tolkien
After receiving the news of the arrival of a little boy into the family of a good friend, I decided to make him something. I have recently found the making of toys a lot of fun (size doesn't really matter, and the mistakes give each creations character). This dragon pattern is a free Ravelry download by Ruth Bramley and can be found here (Raveley is a FANTASTIC free knitters and crocheters site with tons of free patterns and an excellent resource for inspiration). I decided to start this project about a month ago while on vacation. I gathered all my materials before we left town, without thoroughly reading the pattern first... a faux pas for any knitter! I had not realized that this pattern was knit in the round- and only had straight needles with me. Well, I made the most of it-and translated the pattern to straight needled. This resulted in a few moments of disorientation and frustration since I couldn't remember if I was supposed to be reading backwards or forwards. But, as you can see, in the end it came together.
As usual I couldn't resist adding my own changes as I went along. I first decided that the blanket needed to have a scale-like appearance, so decided to knit it with a honeycomb pattern that I first learned when knitting Sheldon. Secondly, The wings in the pattern were quite boring compared to the other parts of the dragon, so I changed that up as well...the remainder was pretty much as written. The eyes were a bit of a challenge, as I have not yet come up with a great pattern for eyes. These were just embroidered, with a little chain stitch added at the end for his eyebrows. I feel they give him a dragon-like appearance- without being too scary!
Mr Dragon will be off on his first adventure to the land of California this week as he is wrapped up and shipped to his new home. His job is to terrorize the newborn with love!
