Chinese Dragon PDF [Pattern]

It is finally finished so here for your crocheting enjoyment!!

This is a very generic Chinese Dragon pattern, you can add more details to it to make your favorit dragon, like working it in red and gold will give you a Mushu style Dragon as apposed to this blue and white Haku look.

Click here for Chinese Dragon PDF
 I would rank this as between Easy and Medium.  Mostly because of the wiring work put into it to pose and have him standing unassisted.

I do think if/when I make an other I will move the legs a bit farther back by 4 to 6 rows.

I used Red Heart Soft for the hair because I like the shine, but I recomend in the pattern to use normal RHSS I realized to late that the shine in the soft makes the hair next to impossible to style unlike a normal acrylic or wool/cotton would.

CD-WIP update

He is not finished yet.  I spent about 4 hours brushing out his hair with a slicker brush, then trimmed it up a bit.                
                 
I will probly brush it some more and give it an other trim later but for now I will leave the hair as it is.

I still need to work out a pattern for ears, and decide if I want to add in a eye lid or any other details.

Sadly I didn't realize how heavy his front end would be so I can not put him in the pose I had planned.  Which would be a springing spiral pose as if he was getting ready to launch himself into the sky his top end is just to heavy and the wire is not enough support.  So I know now if I make an other CD I need to either double up on the wire, possibly twisting it cable style for better support or get a thicker stronger wire that might be harder to manipulate.

At some later point I am going to play with posing him and see if I can come up with something I like better then this pose.

CD- Wiring the legs and toes

 Above is the finished front set of legs, fully wired and sewn into the body.  They stand up all on their own with no instability.  I realized as I was taking the photo I had sewn the legs in farther up the body then I marked had off.  I think once he is finished and I pose him it wont be noticeable or even make much difference.


What I did was take 2 pieces of wire about 12 inches long.  I bent the first piece in half and slid it all the way threw the body where I wanted the legs to to, then slipped the other piece threw the bend and interlocked them by bending it.  Think of it like to U shapes with one dangling from the bottom of the other.   I used the piece that was going threw the body to pull the other leg wire inside the body so the join is hidden in the middle.  I had been trying to catch the spine wire at first to try and have the legs connected joined over it but I was not able to pin it down the way I was putting the wiring though.              
                      
I slid the legs onto the wire after I was sure the leg wires where locked together and wouldn't fall out.  I took this time to sew the top of the legs into the body. 

At the toes, I took the wire, bending one side to the front middle toe and the other to the back longer toe.   I bent it back onto itself snipping it just short of the leg section, I found I had about 1 1/2 inch worth of waste wire.  I then used my tail end of yarn to pick up the sides of the toe and sew over the wire with a whip stitch closing the toe up over the wire.  I made sure to sew up the two front toes in the same manor, and criss crossed over the bottom of the leg to close up the small gap.

I did not stuff any part of the leg or toes although in hindsight I could have stuffed the top of the leg with a grape sized amount of stuffing and just rolled the leg a bit to get the stuffing to evenly distribute through it.

I just need to make an other set of legs for the back, then I will get started on all the small things and adding the hair along the spine.

The results are in...

 

First off as I was un pinning the dragon to take him off the board I realized I had made a mistake.

I blocked him perfectly, there is a nice straight line.  It just goes down his belly.  I accidentally blocked him upside down, and yes there is a top and a bottom, the eyes are set 2 stitches above the 1/2 way mark so they are visibly on the top section so I couldn't just flip the whole project.

The blocking still worked well and like I said the belly has a nice straight line, but because I could not see exactly where I was pinning though on the other side the top is not as straight.   So if I do make an other dragon, or decide some of my other amigurumi could do with some blocking I know now that its possible to block 3Dforms, and easy to do.  Just need to triple check, is it right side up, and is it straight before steaming.

I did manage to run a bit 17 gauge rustproof wire through him from nose to tail.  This is wire I had on hand from when I was trying to make a chain mail dice bag for my husband (someone else made and sent him one before I finished so I just set it all aside) I know it came from our local hardware store, its electric fence wire, I went with it because its specifically says its rustproof, and soft enough I do not need anything special to manipulate it just some needle nose pliers that have a wire cutter built in.  I was able to make a small loop with the tip of the wire and tie off a slip knot onto it with some scrap yarn, I then threaded threw my darning needle.  I worked the needle threw the body (popping out every 3-4 inches and working back into the exact spot I came out of) using the needle and scrap yarn to pull and guide the wire all the way through.

I also got my base line down for adding in his spin hair.  I took about a yard and a half of the hair color (blue) and used my yarn needle to embroider a chain stitch all the way down the spine.  You can see in the photos it is not 100% straight but its dang close.  Once I get all the strands of hair connected and brushed you will not see the spine and it will appear straight.  I will be taking 4 inch strands and using a larks knot to attach them to the chain stitch going down one side of the spine and back up the other side so the mane will look nice and full, also so the hair line will look the same on both sides as apposed to if I just held 2 strands and went threw both loops of the chain the sides would look visibly different.

The cats both seemed to think he was a toy meant just for them to attack while I was working on him so there was almost no way to work with him or even get a photo with one one of the two kitties taking notice and literally jumping in on the photo opp.  Dayton in the front, Connie in the back if you can spot her, they thought it was a game of who could attack first when I was running the wire through (it was waving all over the place) not to mention I did have about 1 foot of yarn dangling off the tail end from where I had finished embroidering so that was probably my first kittie attracting mistake.

Chinese Dragon WIP (and steam blocking acrylic)

I am currently working on making a white and blue Chinese style Dragon.

I am keeping some rough notes, so I will have a bare bones pattern to share at the end of it all.

For those of you thinking it looks like a white snake and not at all like a dragon, well yes it doesnt look like a European Dragon with a stocky body and huge wings.  Chinese dragons do not have wings at all as its believed they have mystical power they use to fly, they are said to be a long serpentine body with 4 legs, and a long ridge or hair line from head all the way to the tail.

I had seriously been thinking of wiring this guy as I worked him up but that did not happen.  I might wind up trying to slide some wire in him now that the base of the body is finished.

I had to pin and steam block him, as all crocheters know when you work in the round you get a bit of twisting as you work.  Well with a small diameter tube you tend  to get a lot of twist so much so it twisted all the way around, and that would make it more work for me when I try to run a Ruff down the spine.

So my awsome husband ran down to the basement and got my blocking mat so I could 'block' my dragon.   The first1/3 of the dragon was pinned down fairly easily it had almost no twist, it was when I got to the last 1/3 that the twist was really bad.  I had to put 12 T-pins into the end tail to get my rows to line up as close to perfect as I could.

From here I went back over double checking the line of the spine was straight, which is good because I had it twisting off still so I was able to fix it fairly painlessly.  I then used my garment/upholstery steamer I got on sale (only $19!!)  and slowly steamed it.  Holding the steam head about one inch from the work for15 to 20 seconds per section with a 3 1/2 inch head over 2-3 ft of dragon before moving on.  I went over the body till the 10oz of water I had put in the machine was used up (give or take an ounce).  I know I got at the least 4 passes of the body fully with some focused steaming on the tail end where the worst of the twisting occurred.  You can get the same blocking results with a iron that has a steamer setting I would just recommend you hold it farther away as the iron's heat itself will affect the yarn (2-4 inches).


I have taken out most of the T-pins but the head and last tail pin there has been no attempt to twist back up but I will be leaving it pinned over night so that it can dry up as the steam did leave it a bit damp.

I also got some time to paint up some eyes so he will be sporting custom painted eyes, I was going for a silver sky blue, I will try to get a better photo of the head later.

On Sunday I will hopefully know if I will be hosting a 30-60 minute pannel at a local anime/geek convention KawaCon.  Its been up in the air for a  while now when I was ask I said yes right away they just have to work out details on their end, it on hinges on if they have an open room and time slot.

Also I will be out at Animeggroll Sunday (1/18/15) helping people make/finish some Octos from 12-2!!

Ta-done! Water Dragon

Instead of horns that I normally do on other dragons I opted to do seaweed tendrils.  I also added smaller patches of seaweed to the arms as you can see in the back image, but I wound up removing them they where not fuzzing up and looking light and airy like the sections on the head.  Due to it being a water dragon I went with making a longer finned tail and no hind legs.

 
I did an indoor shoot today because I realize the last few blue items I photographed out on my bench just got sapped of color by the silvering wood and I wanted the colors to show clearly.

Yes, there are no wings.  I thought about it in a practical manner and if it was swimming in the water the wings would cause to much drag and wouldn't be practical. Also it might make it too busy looking with all the details

WIP Water Dragon

This is my take on the Water dragon from my element set I have been working on the past week.

I unspun some navy, purple, and light blue and used the the singles held with the working yarn to get this effect, light to dark as I worked own.

I got a close up of the eyes I painted, they where clear cat eyes 7mm and now they are lavender dragon eyes.  I wish I had been able to get 8mm eyes but they didnt have them in that size still I think in person these look realy stunning.     
            
I need to take a day and paint up 20+ set's of eyes as my stock of hand painted is slowly being used up.

I plan on adding a little surprise element to this guy but not sure how it will look so I have to play with placement of it.

Earth Dragon!

Ok so for the earth dragon after talking with u/SunnyInDenmark over in r/Crochet I came up with a lava dragon spawned from the molten core of the earth, as my earth dragon.

This one is sporting my hand painted copper eyes.    
          
I spent a few hours embroidering the lava cracks into this guy.  I unspun some red and orange and respun it together to get that red hot look.

Some more Octo's and Dragons!

 Just an update on things I am making.


I finished off a Storm/Rainbow Octo, and a yellow and navy Octo.

I swapped over to doing dragons, I finished an orange and yellow firy dragon, and a brushed white and blue airy dragon.

I opted out of doing horns on the Air dragon for the fluffy wispy ears and chest ruff.

Debating on making an earth and water pair next.  Unsure what colors I would pick for them as brown isnt a popular color in the dragons and I am not sure how to do a blue water dragon that doesnt just look like the air one.

More procrastination...?

I swear I am working on getting my patterns all typed up and bundled. While doing it, I had an idea.  What would an Octo look like if I made it with a African Flower motif to start.  This is the result, I know if I make a second I have to work on the flower part as it left gaps big enough for stuffing to seen which means it can be pulled/worked out.  I used the left over yarn from my purse and scraps from the pillow shame I made back in april.



I am currently working on a Mythic Amigurumi Booklet that will have the patterns I wrote for chibi dragons, cthulhu, abnormal unicorn, and a dragon egg pouch.

Newest Chibi Dragon to join the bunch...

Meet Kisses.  She is chocolate brown, and silver with light purple eyes.

The colors just made me think of Hershey's kisses so thats where she got her name.   
      
I have decided to hold off on working on puting together a pattern till after the convention I am going to sell at so I have more time to work on things to sell.

This does not mean I wont start on it, but dont expect it soon.

Any suggestions for color combos anyone would like to see the pattern dragon worked up in?  Think of what will photograph well, so white and black are both out the window.  I was thinking of digging threw my stash to see what I have, I know I have left over colors from my rainbow granny that are more then enough to make a dragon, and many diffrent shades of those colors.

Fear the Con 7 June 13-14 (St Louis gamers convention)

This is the selection I plan on hauling with me to Fear the Con 7 June 13th - June 14th, 2014 at the Maryland Heights Centre.

 This is, a winter chibi, a Dean chibi, a dinosaur, a owl, 2 blue eyes (cats love these), 3 generic turtles (so they can be customize later), one full set of TMNT will be sold as a set (unless it gets to mid 2nd and no interest is shown then I will brake them up), 3 chibi dragons, 5 cthulhu in assorted colors, 9 bunnies in assorted colors, 2 dragon scale dice bags, and a pokeball dice bag.

I am trying to decide if I should make more TMNT, or work on more dragons, or not bother with crochet and get to work on creating the Chibi Dragon Pattern.

Which is better? WIP

So I am going to make two version of my black chibi dragon. This first one has the eyes I hand painted with the silver blue paint I mixed myself.  I was lucky I caught some day light towards the end of a rainy day so I got a good natural light shot of these guys.

The sun kind of made his horns hard to see against the wood of my bench that has faded into a beautiful silver.  I used yarn colors Steel and Black from Red Heart.  Steel was a vintage color I picked up at a yard sale so not sure if its still a colorway you can buy.

Besides trying to decide which eyes work best with these guys (hand painted or prepainted) I want to get everyones opinion on something else.   I want to get this pattern typed up into a pdf, but I am struggling with deciding on if it should be free or a donation pattern.  I am also thinking of making a booklet pdf with all my patterns in it free and pay and having it be a donation one and the only way you can get the Chibi Dragon pattern again it would just be for donations of $1 up to how ever much the donator thinks its worth.  
  
If I go with the booklet, it will be most the patterns on the site up to the dragon one.  Any patterns that I publish after, if the booklet seems to go over well, I will bundle up to make a second booklet with an other bonus pattern that can only be gotten in the 2nd booklet.  I dont know if this sounds like a good idea or if I am just nuts.  If I do make the booklet, it is something that if/when I start doing craft fairs I can get copy's printed to take with me and sell as well.

What are your thoughts, hand painted or prepainted?
Free/Donation and if Donation should I go booklet or does that not even appeal to you.

Chibi Dragon

I worked on this little guy for 2 days trying to get a good look.

I wound up reworking the wings almost 5 times, the ears twice, and the horns I didnt bother to keep track of how many styles I went threw before settling on these.

I aam still unhappy with the finished item.  I think when I make an other I will be tweeking things like the body, tail, legs, and how I go about assembling it. 
       
I was inspired by a old photo I saw a few years ago on the web, where they are no longer being made.

What is your guys opinion?   
  
Should I try cat eyes on the next one instead of my special hand painted ones?  They seem to blend in to well with the yarn I used this time, I painted them a sea green hat has a bit of shimmer to it. 

Next one I make I think will be a black version with gray wings and horns, I was thinking of painting eyes in a silver or silver blue shimmer but maybe the cat eye pupil eyes (which I can only get in yellow/green so I cant make my own colors) would leave it with a more dragon like look.

I even commented to my husband (before the wings and horns where on) that it looked more like a frog that had its tadpol tale still.

Dragon Egg (Dice Bag)

So I am gearing up for a convention that is in June.  I want to make a few dice bag's because it is a gaming convention.  This is one of the ideas I have come up with it is suppost to look like a dragon egg playing on popular shows like Game of Thrones and of course How to Train a Dragon.

I made it up as I went, I made the base of a circular sc, then made the under structure out of all DC, making the scales by skipping 2 dc and working the scale over the next to posts.

I have no idea how well this will go over or how much I will want to charge for it.  I am thinking of asking $15-20, I put in over 8 hours and would be so disappointed if no one was even interested.

I think the next Dice bag I work up might be a BaBomb I am just unsure how I will make the top look right and not like a black bag with a gray drawstring.  I might also work up some Police Box Dice Bags as well but that depends on if I can get toner for my printer.

Dragon Finished

So I am finished with the dragon for my nephew. he wanted a green and black dragon so I hope he loves it.

It is just over two feet long from nose to tail.  I hand stitched  a running chain along his head and neck then did a row of staggered single and double crochet along the neck.  I used a fine tooth comb to tease the yarn out making it soft and fluffy.   I wasnt able to find a way to make the wings posable with out a wire of some kind and I was asked not to use wire in him.

I think I might make an other dragon for myself later.  I searously need to make a light box for taking pictures in its winter here and there has not been a nice sunny day in a while so all my photo shoots have been indoors and the lighting does no justice to the work.

Dragon --free form crochet--

So a few weeks back my nephew asked my mom to call me and ask me if I could make him a dragon.
I said sure, I dont have a pattern I am working from I am just free form crocheting.

I used Cat safety eyes, and am stuffing as I go because I am working this dragon head, neck, body, tail in one piece.

I still need to work up 4 legs, 2 wings, then add all the small details.

I am still debating on if it should have spikes on the spine or if that would make it look to much like a dinosaur.  Right now my husband says it looks like a Long neck dinosaur so I want to make sure when my Nephew gets it it roars dragon and not dino.

It was requested to be wire free as its going to a kid who will probably be throwing it at people, so I am still trying to figure out a way to make the wings and have them not look floppy, with out having something hard inside them.

I am thinking of finding some flexible boning but not sure how I would be able to work it into the wing in a way anyone would not be able to pull it out or have it fall out.

Truthfully I am thinking so much on this that it seems like I am procrastinating.  I find that I have lost the spark that was inspiring me for this peice, and I have crocheters block.

I know what I need to make, I just cant wrap my brain around making them in the way I invision them in my noggin.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. I am doing the challenge again this year, I skipped doing it last year but in 2011 I managed to finish with like a week of time still to go.

Basiccaly the challenge is to start writing a story, and by the end of the month have atleast 50,000 words finished.  I dont expect to hit 50,000 words in the time frame this year because I just started writing my story... and because I am a tiny bit lazy and easily distracted.

This years story is going to be about a character I made up for my gaming group where are playign Dungeon World right now, but due to some  controversy and conflict I wound up not using.  So I am not giving up on her I am actually going to turn the character into an amazing heroin.

The tale is told from Estrela's point of view, she will turn everyone's concepts of what a dragon is upside down.  Hopefully my idea of what a dragon is will be a fun contrast to what other people think, and they will enjoy it.

I was thinking of blogging updates of the chapters as I finish them, I am just hesitant because I dont want to run off readers who come for the crochet/crafts aspect of this blog. I just think posting here will be an encouragement something that makes me excited to write and get it online to share with people who may enjoy it.  Also they might catch things I miss, I horrible grammer, and spelling and spell check does not always catch it.

So I will start off by saying my novel is in the fantasy gener, it will have many races like elfs, dwarfs, dragons and all that good stuff.  Hopefully it will be done in a freash new way with some twists and turns that are surprising.   If there is no real responce or views to this I will scrap the idea and just go back to keeping to crochet/crafting.


So I will stop with the gabbering and get to it--

A Dragons Tale

by Sarah Cole

Chapter 1

It was warm,  I couldn't ever remeber being so warm before.  The warmth wrapped around me cocooning me.  Everything was so bright as well but I could not tell where the light was coming from it seemed to be coming from me, but that's just silly why would I be glowing.  I reached out but my arm was stopped less than an inch from where it started.  I really was cocooned.

 Panic flashed threw me so fast that every muscle in my body flexed lashing out.   Cracks of seeping darkness started to creep and lash out around me.  Darkness engulfed me I struggled fighting against it only to be slapped in the face with a blast of cold air.

Gasping I jerked upright my arms swinging in a Wooshi form, my left arm bent low tucked in at my waist while the right slipped out in front palm up fingers straight.  My legs straddled the tree branch I had been nestled asleep on I braced them against the tree.  The dream really threw my sences into overdrive.  I was at the rest waypoint, tucked up into the tree just where I went to sleep last night.  Day light was just breaking threw the sky waking up the woods.

I sucked in a breath, the cold fall air burning on the way in waking me up fully.  I looked around trying to see what had woke me up.

The waypoint was barren, cold and slightly damp from the moring dew.  The only prints leading from the road where my own.  Off in the distance from the road I can hear a creaking rattling sound of a cart.  I allow myself to relax my mussels and slide down from the tree.  Pulling my cape around so it hung properly I drew the hood up to cover my sleep tangled  brown gold flecked curls and to throw shade onto my pale eyes.  I took caution when I knew I would be forced to interact with humanoids.  They where often startled by my eyes, they where a pale gold most of the time, but they often reflected my mood.  I tried my best to match the human forms but some things just always remained the same no matter what form I took.  Bruin said that was the one way you could always tell if an animal form was him or not, there was always one thing he couldn't change regardless of what form he took.  He was always blind in every form, the eyes of the animal where scared dark pits .  Its not always the eyes he would emphasize that, just because it was his eyes or mine, others would have different traits they would carry into every form they took.

I was short compared to most over worlders.  I did not have the height and slenderness that came so easily to the Elfs, nor was I short, stout, and sturdy like a dwarf.   When I made my two legger form Bruin made me keep adjusting so I never looked to much like one race over another.  He always called me a pure blending of the races.  He never mentioned the prejudice I might have to deal with, races that believed in pure blood lines where often downright hostile in my presents. I would stick to the outskirts of citys full of pure blood races that where more hostile.  In the 83 years I have been traveling the over world, the races have melded together in alot of places so I was not as out of place in those citys.  Sadly I could not stay in any one place for to long. 

I age far more slowly than the over worlders.  I am 103 years old.  Bruin says dragons are the longest lived creatures on this planet, that dragons shaped the world with their magic making it possible for other life to thrive and coexist.  I would still be a child to those of my race, my  outward appearance is that of a young adult whom has just reached the age where they could strike out on their own or start in training to take over their family's business.  

I must keep traveling, not only so people dont notice I am not aging as they are, but to try and find a way to save my race.