A Chicken for Suzanne

My dear friend Suzanne is a self-proclaimed "chicken gal" and suburbanite-of-necessity who longs to return to her farmgirl days living in the country with a yard full of chickens.

What better way to celebrate her upcoming birthday than sending an Emotional Support Chicken for her to hug and hold while she dreams her sweet farmgirl dreams?

The Emotional Support Chicken by Annette Corsino is just a downright fun pattern to knit, and I think it looks best when executed in tweedy-ish yarn colorways that are reminiscent of the feathers of real chickens. When I saw the lovely marled colorways of KnitPal Cotton to the Core, I just knew they would produce some lovely chickens well worth adding to any metaphorical flock. For this hen, I'm using Caramel Brown as color A and Fresh Peach as color B.

This yarn is on the lighter side for being labeled as a worsted weight - definitely much lighter than the stuff that Red Heart labels as worsted weight. In my opinion, it's closer to being DK weight. I'm still using the needle size specified in the pattern, though, so we'll see how big this hen ends up being compared to the other ones I've knitted with Red Heart. 😅 

I hope Suzanne loves her new chicken, and if she gives it a name, I will update this post to let all y'all know what it is! 💜🐔💜

I'm pretty sure that Suzanne's chicken is the first one of these that I've managed to sew together according to the way the pattern designer intended. Yay!

Emotional Support Chicken

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. 😂

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.

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.

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.

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. 😂

I followed this up by making a friend for Scrappy Henrietta, another Emotional Support Chicken, Scrappy Patty, in colors to match our guest bedroom.

Scrappy Patty and Scrappy Henrietta

 

Scrappy Patty sitting on the bed in our guest bedroom

Scrappy Patty side view

Beaded Fidget Hedgehog

This is a great pattern for using up scrap yarn from your stash. Each hedgehog requires only a small amount of yarn (plus a pair of 8 mm safety eyes, about 68 pony beads, and the other supplies). 

For my first two hedgehogs, I used glitter pony beads that I've had in my crafting stash for at least 27 years. I originally purchased the beads to adorn some Pocahontas costumes for Halloween/dress-up playtime that I sewed for my daughters back in the 1990s. 

My daughters on Halloween in the 1990s wearing the beaded costumes.

Now, all these years later, I can give them each an adorable hedgehog made with the same beads along with a printed photo of them wearing the Pocahontas costumes when they were little. That's a nifty full-circle moment in my book! 😁

So tiny and cute!

Little hedgehog feet.

Little hedgehog bum.

The pattern also has a link to an Etsy listing where you can opt to purchase a printable "carrier" for gifting your hedgehogs, which gives them a cute finishing touch.

Zoey Zebra Melly Teddy Ragdoll

I only made it through the first two parts of the free Zoey Zebra crochet-along before life got in the way and I regrettably had to set the project aside for a few months. By the time I was able to pick it up again, the free links were gone, so I decided to endeavor to finish the project by making the remaining pieces based on the designer Melanie Grobler's photos.

It was easy enough to approximate the legs by looking at the photos, but when it came to the ears, I decided to google around to find something similar that someone else had done and shared the steps. Why reinvent the wheel if I didn't have to, right? I used the ears from Jess Huff's Heidi the Horse free amigurumi pattern, which is also available at this link.

For the rose, I used the free 3D Rose pattern by Lisa Auch, which is also available at this link.

The eyes are 12mm black buttons from this set on Amazon.

Here is a link to my Ravelry project page.