Ravelry Links follow!!!
BUT through it all, my knitting preservers! In fact I've done more knitting in the last few months than I have hooking. However, all of my HPKCHC projects this month that I've turned in have been crocheted!
So for your viewing pleasure!!!:
My dad's Christmas gift, because we tease him about being Mr. Peanut!
And I'm most pleased with this little guy! I took this pattern (non-Ravelry link), and modified it, which you can read following the picture!
Here's what it should look like:
But here's what mine does!
Modification Notes
I really wanted an oak sproutling to emerge from an acorn, like they do in real life, so I took some liberties with this pattern!
First I went outside for a live reference and pulled up a young acorn sprout that the squirrels felt belonged in the flower beds. They’re mistaken.
After I made the acorn and it’s cap, I began to think about how best to add the sproutling. I decided to have it pull out from the center of the cap. When you finish the cap, DON’T cut the yarn off or finish it up. Leave your last loop there, stick a paper clip in it so that it doesn’t rip out your work and leave it all attached to the skein, you will come back to it to use it!
Since I crocheted this project, I think my cap was longer than it would have been if I’d knit it, so I folded my cap under a little and stitched it around, to give it a nice rim! Then I moved on to the leaves.
Leaves: I used a size smaller hook on these. These were pretty much just free-styled, as I wanted them to look random, like they do in real life. I chained about 14 for the first leaf, and crocheted down one side for half of the blade. Since I started at the top of leaf I just sc-ed into the first look from my hook, then sc-ed and chained 2, then sc back into it, then sc-ed into the next. The stitch after that I sc-ed, then ch 2, sc into the same hole, ch 2 again, sc back into the same one, then sc a few down, then slipped over to the other side and worked my way back to the top of the blade replicating what I’d done on the first side.
There were a few gaps, so when I finished it off at the tip, I left a length of yarn, and sewed the blade together down the back along the rib, and this made them fold slightly, which was a perfect look!
The second leaf went a little different, but once you understand the basic idea it’s not that hard to variate it. Join the two, or more (doubt anything over 3 would fit tho), and make sure you have a stem of about ch 20 in green.
The Brown Part of the Stem:
This part starts at the cap, I just chained 10, then joined it to the bottom of the green stem, and chained into it, covering the green tail as I went. This goes for about 10 chains, so you actually end up with 20 visible in brown, and 10 visible in green, the opposite of what it was before assembling! Just weave the end of the brown. I put a needle on it and whipped around the stem some more to mostly cover the green, then I pulled my end down thru that, pulled it SUPER tight, cut it, and then when I eased it out it disappeared! Tada! Magic.
Assembly:
I stuffed the acorn bottom with some tangled up leftovers of the brown wool (this is a great use for yarn scraps, fyi), and sewed a few strings over it thru the rim of the acorn, to keep it held in.
Then I made sure the sprout was pulled to the outside of the cap, and sewed the cap onto my acorn body. Very easy.
How It Works
You stuff the leaves first into the hole in the cap, then the rest of the stem, except for the 10 sc part of the brown that is skinny/narrow. This is your dongle/loop. You can hang this on a Christmas tree if you wanted, and then surprise people with what it can do!
I wish I’d used a lighter brown on the acorn body, but I didn’t have another brown, so I used what I had, overall I’m VERY pleased with it!
There are more pictures if you follow the Ravelry link to my project!
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