Digby

When my roommates and I first moved in together, we went down to a local tavern for dinner after the big moving day. It happened to be trivia night and the first thing that popped into my mind when asked what our team name would be was "stegosaurus". Except the roommate doing the writing wrote down "stegosores". It stuck. Our apartment mascot is the stegosaur. Our wi-fi's named after it, all our party invites on Facebook have to feature a themed stegosaur, my roommate who collects action figures bought a plastic stegosaur that lives on our TV table.

But during the summer, I started crocheting our real stegosore mascot.

I used Lily Sugar'n Cream in Cottage and the vague memories of the elephants I made a few years back.

I started with 4sc in a magic circle and continued around about 8 times before starting to increase. I'd add 3 in approximately the same place to make a hump on one side until it was the right size (about 30sc around), sc'd around about 3 times, then started to decrease (again on the same side to bring the hump back down. I stuffed it when it was closed enough to hold the stuffing in. When it got down to about 8, I sc'd around about 3 times, added 6mm safety eyes, sc'd around 2 more times, then decreased so it closed off.

I used the same pattern for the legs as the elephants--4sc in a magic ring, increased to 8, sc'd around about 5 times. I stuffed them and sewed them on with a yarn needle.

For the tail spikes, I made 2 chains of 10 and just pulled them through the end tail. I put a dot of superglue on each side to hold them in place.

For the back plates, I made a chain of about 35, but worked in a corner every 3-4 chs to make it roughly zigzag. I stitched it on at the valley points with a yarn needle.

He lived on the living room table about a week before the action figure collecting roommate brought out his Star Lord figure to ride on Digby's back. They've lived mostly peacefully on the table since, minus the times Digby gets rowdy and throws Star Lord onto the floor--often at seemingly random intervals.

Noah

It didn't even cross my mind when I met a coworker's pregnant wife over the holidays that I'd need to get on another baby sweater, so when he started talking about "any day now," I ran out to Michael's for Bernat Softee Baby in Little Trees and got down to business.

I tried another of my choice baby patterns, this time in 101. It was a bit stop and go for a while, moving forward and ripping back out and so on. The pattern wasn't as clear as the others have been, but eventually I figured it out and made my way through it, slowly given I could only manage one or two rows a day with my wrist.

I opted on a white and blue ch strand for the "belt" to keep the sweater closed, but something that contrasted a little more would have been better. A darker brown, maybe.

Unfortunately, I didn't complete it in time to deliver it before he went on paternity leave, but most of the office had already seen it by time he came back and it was quite the hit. I was very impressed with how smooth and uniform the pattern was--I often get somewhat transfixed by things like that, so I was very happy with how it turned out.