When I’m looking for patterns by other designers I love when I stumble across something unique. Anyone can put together a bunch of circles and tubes, but sculpting with increases and decreases takes some finesse.
I’d like to start off by saying I absolutely love my results. This is a cute design and the stitch counts hold out great. I am so happy I made one.
If you’d like to find the pattern I have a big button down at the bottom that will take you right to the designer’s page.
I do have to admit there are a few problems with the pattern though. Not to worry! I’ll tell you all about them so you can also enjoy this pattern using the advice I’m about to share!
I do want you to take into consideration that the designer is not from an English speaking country but her pattern is in English with American abbreviations and worked in continuous rounds. The only confusion with the abbreviations would be that she uses st and sc interchangeably. It’s really easy to figure that one out though and I didn’t even notice it anymore after I made the realization. I absolutely love that designers from all over the world are making the effort to translate their patterns into English.
I did notice a typo for rows 13 and 14 of the body. She actually doesn’t have them as rows but put “st” instead. Tiny error to be sure, but not something one would expect to find in a paid pattern that has been around for awhile.
While on the topic of the body, the instructions to shift the round to start doing the striped shirt were a bit confusing. Without retyping her instructions I will just say that I did my color change on the last yarn over of the 10th stitch so the 11th stitch became the first stitch of the next round. It probably would have been even better to go one more stitch to make sure the line of color change ran more directly down the spine of the crocodile.
The next mistake in the body section is a failure to direct you to change back to green on row 40. And a tiny technicality is that the directions for row 41 can be added to the following 42 through 46 because it’s all exactly the same. It didn’t need its own line.
The legs are called “paws” in the pattern and there are 2 sizes to make. Unfortunately the designer does not differentiate or give instructions as to which legs should go where, or even which line to sew them on. I assumed that the thinner legs should go at the furthest points and sewed the pairs right at the edge of the striped shirt.
Spikes are referred to as “thorns” which solidifies the theory that the designer is not fluent in English. And I guess that is why there is limited written out instructions besides the actual rounds of pattern.
The next part is “cheeks” but it doesn’t say how many to make so I assumed it only gets one cheek on the side the eyes face out.
There are a few images to guide you on the eyes but I managed to ignore that page unintentionally and just did my own thing. It still worked out OK but it gave my stitched eyes a much different expression than if I had used the side of the white eye piece instead of having the magic ring pointing out like I did.
A short series of photos from the exact same angle show the progression of the order in which the designer attached the pieces. Sadly, the direct on angle does not allow for the user to count rows or get a close look at where exactly to place the pieces.
The instructions for the teeth confused me a bit although a more experienced crocheter probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. The designer says to insert hook into the 2nd ch from the hook and then do 3 hdc. I probably would have understood it better as, “beginning in the 2nd ch from the hook, do a hdc in each of the remaining 3 stitches.”
The last error is actually kind of a big one considering it’s a paid pattern. There is absolutely no mention whatsoever of the nostrils. It was easy enough to figure out by looking at the image that it’s just 6sc in a MR and left open so it makes a semi-circle. Then I sewed mine on in a curve instead of straight across.
I skipped the thread for a smile because I didn’t have anything on hand that looked right when I tried to add one. I think it looks just fine with or without the smile.
I still think this is a great design and the designer has a ton of potential. I do think there is room for improvement to turn good patterns into absolutely stellar ones.
