Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Mastering the Crocodile Stitch, and a couple of hasty reviews

I think I've gotten the hang of the crocodile stitch.  I remember trying months ago, maybe it was the pattern, maybe I was just not able to focus, but I was not able to figure it out.
Then, for a great-niece's birthday I wanted to make some adorable slippers that used this stitch, bought the pattern from Bonita Patterns and had no problem following her instructions.  I bought a few different patterns, I am hoping to do some winter accessories for myself before winter hits. 
If you do purchase, however, please note that I was automatically added to her mailing list, which is, btw, against Etsy's TOU's.  Instead of asking you to opt in, she considered buying the pattern as opting in.  It was easy enough to unsubscribe, but that is not the point.  Will this stop me from buying again?  Nope, but I will be sure to put something about this in my note to seller when checking out.
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Forward about a half year, and a couple of friends tagged me in a post on FB.  Someone was looking for someone to crochet some owls that used this stitch, the owls were adorable, so I messaged her.  Never did hear back with a yes or a no thank you, but someone else in the same post commented that she would be interested.  I messaged that one, heard back right away, and wound up purchasing the pattern and completed these:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/101864770/owl-in-crocodile-stitch-crochet-pattern
The pattern from CAROcreated(click on the picture to see the listing) is actually for an applique and calls for sport or fingering yarn for an owl app. 4" tall.  The customer wanted one a bit larger, for a wall, so I used worsted weight yarn and ended up with these, app. 7.5" tall.  The colour may be a bit off, the owl on the left is not purple, but grey.

Now, this pattern was fairly easy to follow, however, someone with less experience crocheting may have gotten confused:  I had to stop and reread at times because the pattern did not exactly follow standard format.  Instead of saying (example, this is *not* from the pattern) 2sc in 1st st, sc in 10, 2sc in last, it was 'increase, 10sc, increase'.  I did have some difficulty interpreting that and something like 'inc, 3sc, 1sc, 2sc', when I wasn't sure if the 2 were in one stitch.  Until I realized there were actually brackets:  'inc, (3sc) 1sc, 2sc' to show that the 3sc were all in one stitch.

Would I buy from this seller again?  Oh, yes! CAROcreated has some awesome looking parrots and some more appliques that I would love to work up!