Here be dragons!

I had long wanted to make a crocheted dragon for my son, who adores all things dragon-related. I had looked around and finally decided that the one to tackle would be the Smaug pattern by Heidi Bears which is made by crocheting a large number of shapes based on the African Flower pattern and then connecting them in such a way that they make a dragon body, which is then stuffed with fibrefill to bring it to life!

The pattern calls for sock-weight yarn (4-ply) but I wanted to make a larger dragon, so I went for double knit instead (8-ply) and used a 3.5mm hook, in a fab royal purple teamed with silver-grey with a metallic thread through it.

The finished figure is approximately 120cm (4 feet!) from nose end to tail tip, and stands about 44cm high. It took around 2 months to make, and used approx. 600g of yarn (300g of each colour) plus almost a kilo of fibrefill stuffing.

The effect was just what I wanted, and my son promptly fell in love with the newest addition to his dragon collection!