This is a review of a free pattern by Hannah Daley.
Work by me, Jen Hateruma.
I needed a gift for a family friend who loves alligators and I didn’t have the time to work out my own design, so I did a quick search and this beauty jumped out at me.
This is an incredibly well written pattern devoid of mistakes. It is incredibly easy and would be an awesome early project for a beginner crocheter. You can choose US or UK terminology, but there are only 5 abbreviations anyway.
While the head is comically large, it is not top heavy and is not prone to toppling over. That’s all thanks to the well balanced tripod formed by the feet and tail pieces.
Don’t mind that offset line of stripes in the back. I am fully aware that there are many techniques available to avoid that but when I’m doing someone else’s pattern, I try my very best to follow the pattern exactly. If it doesn’t suggest a special technique, I don’t do it. If it suggests an invisible decrease while the pattern itself was written with a regular decrease, I use the regular. In all honesty, I kind of like the quirky quality it gives to handmade pieces.
The only change I made to the pattern was I embroidered the eyes instead of using plastic safety eyes. I try to avoid plastic eyes at all costs.
Being a free pattern, I usually don’t expect perfection. This pattern came pretty close though. If I had to offer constructive criticism I would start off with sharing my disappointment that there is only that single front view picture of the gator and the assembly instructions are overly simple with lines such as “sew tail to body” with no suggestion of placement.
Possibly the only thing that could be considered a complaint is that a few lines of instructions for the body were abbreviated more than they should have been. The problem starts with row 29 when it says to repeat row 23 and finish with 42 stitches. The problem with that is row 23 has 48 stitches. It’s pretty clear as you’re working the pattern that the instruction to repeat a row is referring to the COLOR the round should be done in. It made me think a bit harder than I wanted to while sitting up with a sleepless toddler in the middle of the night.
Overall, I highly recommend this pattern to anyone that wants cute results with a straightforward design.
You can find this pattern by Hannah Daley HERE.
