Tag: Pterodactyl

Baby Booties

(This post was written on the 25th of March. Since it is a gift, I waited until it was received to post this account of the project)

You may or may not know that I have not really been able to knit for a long time now. My arm starts to hurt and it’s just not fun. So when a friend had her first baby, I wanted to see if knitting would be possible again. What better way to test than with a small project: something for baby. I searched ravelry for some baby booties patterns and eventually found one for Baby Hausschuhe. Now, just a boring booty wouldn’t work, you understand. I needed to.. do something to make them stand out just a little.

Cue some dinosaurs! What else?

I’d found a chart for a cute little dinosaur that I figured could work here. It transferred it to an excel file so I could work it. The dinosaur would be on the left outside of the first booty, facing backwards (otherwise he would get caught up in the toe decreases). But before I could start on the body of the shoe, I had to work on the bottom. So I cast on two booty soles in yellow and started knitting. Once the soles were done, I followed the first rows of the pattern until the purl how, then I knit 6 stitches and started my dinosaur pattern there. It all worked out pretty well. After following the pattern for the toe decreases and about 5 cm of ribbing, I was bored. My arm also hurt again – stupid.

On Saturday I felt like working on the second one, but I wanted a different pattern. I’d first looked over ravelry for a fun dinosaur chart, but I couldn’t find one. So on to google I went. Eventually settling on a pterodactyl. I found this picture of a Pterodactyl slipper that became the basis of my pattern. I made something resembling it in Excel and again kept my fingers crossed. This one also worked remarkably well. I knit until I got to the same hight as the other one and then transferred them both to a circular needed so I knew that they were the same hight. A few more rounds, some stretchy bind off and two booties were done! I think they are cute, but I hope the new owners also like them. We’ll see.

Purple Pterodactyl!

From the same book that produced the Plesiosaur, now comes the Pterodactyl!

It all started from the plesiosaur and when I showed it and the book around. One of my friends seemed to like it and really liked the pterodactyl that’s also in the book. I told her I’d make her one. She requested the colour scheme from the Dinobabies pterodactyl, Dak. He is purple/pinkish with a white belly. I got some yarn for my birthday that was a pretty good  to pictures I found of Dak.

Dak

I knit mostly according to the pattern, although I did make some changes to make it look more like Dak. The instructions were followed for the legs, although black toes were knit. It was also according to instructions for the tummy, but guestimated where to start adding white to create the belly. I followed the instructions for the head (including errata), but decided not to change colour. I didn’t make the arms, although he did get strips of knitting along his wings to simulate arms. There are black fingers following the pattern for the arms. For the wings, I didn’t want him to have trapezoid wings, so I followed the pattern to where the fingers are, then I increased a stitch along the top in every row and decreased a stitch in the bottom every other row. This gave the wings more shape. He does have more of a tail than Dak, but less than the original. Last but not least, he’s got a neck! This was completely improvised.

Side Front

Here you can see the knit-in belly and the toes, also visible are his arms. I added red buttons for the eyes. I really do think that the colour matches quite well.

Back Side

These two really show the shaping on the wings (there is some!), and his little tail on the left. The right picture shows the neck, which he has, and that you can still move his legs around to suit the occasion. I think my friend liked him, so I’m proud.

I really like the book. I also started another one right after finishing Dak. That one is an Allosaur. I also made some small ones, where I took the body and legs from the book but improvised the defining features. You’ll probably see those around here too at some point.