A Leg Up
I started my niece's Miss Frog this weekend. I don't need to finish it until January but I'd like to be able to take breaks from knitting all those little pieces. And mattress stitch. Lots and lots of mattress stitch.
I'm using Knit Picks Shine Sport in Grass and Leapfrog and Cotlin in Swan. They were all out of white in Shine Sport and I didn't want to wait and pay additional shipping for a single ball of yarn.
I'm knitting it firmly an US #3's but it's still staying very soft. My hope is that if I knit it firmly the stuffing will not show thorough and it will hold up to lots of love (at least, I hope it gets lots of love).
The pattern has been pretty good so far. Things I like:
- Stitch counts for every row that has incs or decs.
- Pics for the unusual instructions like making up the eyes and transitioning from the foot to the leg.
Things that could be improved:
- Gauge. It says DK or worsted weight yarn but doesn't list a gauge.
- When the pattern tells you to work in St st it doesn't say whether to start with a knit or purl row. This has only been a question one time - when knitting the eye - because I hadn't worked any rows yet. A quick read through the rest of the instructions and it was clear I should start with a knit row.
- For the collar yarn, it lists 10dag=400m. I'm still not sure what this says but I think this is telling you to use a thinner yarn because in the instructions for the collar (on page 6) it says "Notice: yarn for a collar is thinner than yarn for a frog!" I didn't see this note in the instructions so I bought the same weight yarn for the collar. I'm sure I can fudge it since it's a toy so I'm not too worried.
- There are several typos in the pattern. To be fair some of the typos may be because I believe the designers are not native English speakers, but in others I think they're just genuine typos. So far they're not anything I couldn't figure out.
BTW, they use the word "nari" in the embroidery instructions for the face. By process of elimination I've figured out they're talking about the nostrils. I googled "nari nostril" and found a definition to confirm it. I think this is probably a translation thing. Or am I the only one who didn't know that word?
Wow, from naris to nari. The word was unknown to me anyway, but I do notice that a lot of non-native speakers tend to omit consonants that appear at the end of the word, both when speaking and when writing. Kudos to you for being so persistent and forgiving, I would have been very annoyed if I had paid for an unclear pattern.
Naris and nari are Latin. I had to think about it a little, but the 4 years I took in high school came back. Good luck with the pattern.