The Yarn of the Whipped Lion

(Some of this is from a previous post.)

I love patterns with jungle animals--just the heads though--does that make them jungle-animal busts? My daughter wanted a wall hangy thing for her dorm/suite. I wanted to make a tiger--think of the colors!--but my daughter attended a university that has been a long time rival of a school with a tiger mascot--I had to go with a lion.

I couldn't find a knitting pattern I liked so I tracked down a lion pattern to crochet. I found the pattern in a library book and it was real bear trying to scan the chart so I could enlarge it. (Some Library People are so touchy about tearing a page out of a book, sheesh!) The pattern was a basic single-crochet rectangular "canvas" with the lion cross-stitched on afterward. Cool, eh?

I made a few miscalculations.

First, the "canvas" was supposed to be made in a simple afghan stitch. Since I had never mastered the afghan crap, I just single crocheted the thing and, big surprise, cross-stitching over single crochet sucks. Then too, I didn't check my gauge and what should have been a twenty-four by thirty-six inch rectangle became a thirty-six by forty-four inch monstrosity. I altered the lion pattern graph to adjust to the change in size and the altered stitch. The "canvas" was made with good ole Red Heart--it was just a wall hanging for goodness sake--but I decided to substitute the plain ole worsted weight for a thicker yarn to do the cross-stitching--Lion Brand Hairy Yarn, I think it was. I thought it would make the lion stand out, be more solid looking, and give it more texture.

Threading a yarn needle with the hairy yarn was hell, then it would unwind or unbulk after just a few stitches, and the finished stitches fuzzed from handling. The cross-stitching took forever! I started and stopped and hid it for a while and restarted and, finally, after six months, I finished.

I blocked it, and blocked it, and blocked some more. It was baggy and saggy so I ran a needle with yarn through a lot of rows to even it up a bit but I never did get it to be a rectangle. I pruned the yarn where it had fuzzed, sewed on the eyes--I was really proud of those eyes, I designed them myself--and made his little whisker moles and used black wire for his actual whiskers. I attached the whole business to some luan and attached that to a frame and my daughter hung it so it was the first thing her visitors saw when they entered her suite. He was a cutie.

My daughter arrived with the lion remains during Spring Break. Evidently her friends and visitors felt the need to pet it. This is the poor dear after I removed him from the frame and unstuck him from the luan.

Sad, isn't he? His whiskers are gone and the verdamt cross-stitching has come loose in a few places, he is even more so-not-a-rectangle since I pried him from the luan, and his nose looks like it has boogers hanging out of it. *sigh*I am not up to refurbishing him right now. I didn't have a camera when he became an official FO so I can't show anyone his pre-petted beautiful self. If I do get him fixed up I will definitely have a picture of him to hang on my own wall. Meanwhile, I think he needs a vet.