I just couldn't resist the allure of the Emotional Support Chicken any longer. Meet Scrappy Henrietta! 😍
This pattern arrived on the knitting scene sometime in 2023 or 2024 (I believe), and the internet practically EXPLODED with excitement.
I added the pattern to my Ravelry favorites for safe-keeping but decided to wait before making one. I noticed, however, as the months went by the way the emotional support chicken consistently remained on the first page of Ravelry's "hot right now" designs, suggesting that the internet's adoration for the ESCs had yet to abate. It was on FIRE.
Eventually, I just couldn't resist the pull of the ESC any more.
I think the thing that put me over the edge was when I discovered that The Knitting Tree LA had made a companion video for the pattern. Checking out the video was my undoing. 😂
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| Tail part 1 |
I grabbed a long old scrap of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn in the Jazzy Stripe colorway (left over from an Infinite Granny Square afghan project) and cast on to follow along with the video, which starts at the tail.
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| Tail part 2 |
For part 2 of the tail and the main part of the body, I used a couple of long scraps of Red Heart With Love in the Pewter Gray colorway that were left over from when I made my Autumn Mists vest with no pattern.
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| Tail and main body |
I don't know which yarn I used for the neck and head, but it was one long scrap of an ombre-ish yarn with purple, dark pink, and raspberry colors that is probably something by Red Heart, but I didn't have a label for it anymore.
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| Neck and head added |
I used up the remainder of the raspberry ombre scrap for the top end of the undersection piece, and more of the gray yarn to finish the undersection.
Henrietta got a bit wonky as I was sewing her up, where the two ends of her neck stripes don't line up at the front, but hey. She is still adorable, and I wuv her!! She has 15 mm blue safety eyes from a pack that I bought off Etsy years ago from a seller named 6060, who is no longer active on the site. Whenever I'm installing safety eyes, I always use this tool to help set the backs, because it makes it a lot easier for my arthritic hands to handle the task of snapping them on securely.
You might be able to knit a whole ESC by only watching the video, but I think the video really makes a better accompaniment if you also own the written pattern, so before I reached the end of the first tail section, I bought the pattern: And the emotional support chicken claimed yet another willing (happy) victim. 😂