8/30/2009

Free Pattern Sunday: Gumball the Kitten by Samantha J. Montgomery


I knew I had to try Samantha Montgomery's Gumball the Kitten patten the first time I saw it. After all, who wouldn't love a tiny, pink kitten? I was too excited with the progress to take the time to cut the felt circles for the eyes, but other than that, I think mine came out pretty close to Samantha's.

That being said, if you want to try your own gumball, I have a little advice.

First, beginners and people who are new to amigurumi crochet may be confused by the abbreviation "invdec." This abbreviation stands for "invisible decrease." When working an invisible decrease, you skip the yarn over between picking up the first loop and second loop in your decrease. For an excellent tutorial (both right-handed and left-handed) check out Planet June.

Second, if you read the comments to the pattern, you'll see that there is a bit of confusion with round 9 of the head. I'm no whiz at math, so I had to make round 9 several times before I finally figured out what was wrong. The instructions want you to decrease a total of 12 stitches to end up with 18 stitches in the round. If you work the 5 invdec + 1 sc around as indicated, you will have enough stitches to repeat the pattern about 2 1/2 times for a total of 14 decreases. Since you really only need 12 decreases, I recommend substituting the following for round 9:

Round 9: 4 invdec + 2sc around (18)

Finally, I ended up making some adjustments with the back legs in order to end up with the same amount of stitches that Samantha's pattern requires. Long story short, round 5 of the back legs shares the same problem as round 9 for the head. Follow the pattern instructions and you'll end up with 10 stitches instead of 11. So, in round 5, I changed the pattern to:

Round 5: (2 invdecr + 1 sc) *3, then 1 invdecr + 1 sc (11)

In round 6 of the back legs, I just couldn't figure out the point of the hdc + sc before finishing off, so I eliminated them. As a result, my round 6 looks like this:

Round 6: 3 invdec + 5 sc

All in all, I'm very pleased with my Gumball and I'm sure that I'll be making a few more for some special cat lovers in my life. If you want to check out the finished projects, I'll be posting them in my Ravelry notebook.

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