Bringing you yet another pattern review from a birthday present, again already gifted so there will be no spoilers.
This is a pattern from Cottontail and Whiskers – Charlie the Chicken door stop.
Now, I do have to be completely honest, I ‘pattern-hacked’ this and my outcome (as you can probably tell by the title) is completely different from the listing picture
However, after the success of the emotional support chicken, I wanted to find another larger crochet make for my brother’s birthday present. Doom scrolling through Etsy is a good way of finding new patterns and pattern makers. Lo and behold this little gem jumped out at me. How can you not love the cartoon way this pattern has been designed?
It hit me quite quickly (probably because my brother wound up with a bit of a Wallace and Gromit themed birthday) but the designs remind me a lot of how Nick Park designs his characters over at Aardman Studios. Inspiration hit, and before I knew it my brain was figuring out how to hack the pattern to give me Feathers McGraw from ‘the wrong trousers’.
Honestly, I did everything wrong for this pattern, I didn’t use Aaron weight I used two strands of DK, I made it in black not brown, I colour changed the white penguin stomach on the fly (I was so sick of the colour changes by the end), I fudged together feather’s squashed pyramid beak and I used bits of the comb instructions and the start of the body to make the red rubber glove Feather’s wears on his head to disguise himself as a chicken.
And I couldn’t have been more happy with how it turned out! Seeing my brother love it as much as he did also made my day.
Would I do anything differently if there was a next time? Yes, because of the nature of circular crochet, the vertical rows of crochet lean at a diagonal. I had forgotten that (it’s been a while since I free formed stuff) so next time I would make sure to balance the white stomach properly taking the diagonal into consideration. An entire bag of hobbycraft polyfill stuffing and 500g of weighted plastic beads went into this… I needed more stuffing, especially in the long neck and head. (There’s a theme of under stuffing in my toys, clearly!) lastly I would probably locate the beak and eyes a bit higher up the head and neck so that the rubber glove sat higher and could be taken off to make the door stop look like Feathers when he was a penguin. I played it safe and left room for the glove to fit snugly to avoid it falling off.
So how did the pattern handle (in as far as I used it, at least) honestly, it’s a really good and easy pattern to read and use. It comes together quite quickly and I would have been done much sooner if I hadn’t messed about with colour changes. I will absolutely be using it again to make a chicken and I’ve purchased a few others for other gifts (this time to make them as directed) so watch this space.
If you are looking for a different kind of doorstop I would absolutely reccomend this and any of Cottontail and Whiskers patterns in their catalogue. These are really fun to make and look at and a beginner would be able to tackle it without too many issues. 11/10, would highly recommend!
GeekySquidoo 