another (more friendly?) eel, and a few notes on the pattern

In the interest of not permanently offending Gentle Eel's designer, I attempted another. In hot pink. It's pretty cute. The head suggests "pig" to me, and those front flipper/fins would make great pig ears, so maybe I'll be turning out a little hot pink piggy soon, too.I do have a few notes on her pattern. She's good, and the shaping is all fantastic, and easy to follow, so nothing that drastic.

When sewing on the top and belly fins, if the fins are made from non-solid yarn, I decided it looked better to use the body yarn instead of the variegated fin yarn, as the colors you're sewing with are not matching the fin after the first little bit. If you want those stitches to be invisible, your yarn should match at least one of the colors you're sewing together. That's more a matter of personal preference, though. If you want to do it this way, you'll want to leave a long tail of body yarn when finishing, and you will also need another length of yarn anchored in, to sew on the other fin, since you should start sewing both from the tail end of the body, but not at the same time, because that could get tricky.

I think I already mentioned, I found I needed a few more foundation hdc's to get the right length for mine. Again, not really a pattern problem, just that my eel body was a tad longer than hers, because mine was less tight, or my estimate of where the fins should start may have been different. That's the beauty of foundation chain, though - any length you need, it's easy to adjust, you don't have to start over, just add or subtract stitches right at the end.

I glossed over one of the last parts when I made Mr Eel, though, and the second time through, I noticed something that needs correcting. She says to sew on the belly fin 1 inch from side fins, and the top fin 2 inches from side fins. But if you look at her picture, and note how long each fin piece is, it's the opposite - the top fin is longer, and closer to the side fins, and the belly fin is shorter and further back. I'm betting most folks looked more at the picture than the directions, like I did, so nobody has noticed this yet. *update* her pattern has been corrected, and she added hdc foundation instructions to that tut as well.

That's it. I hope you tried the eel. It was super quick and easy, and would make a great gift for a guy (well, maybe not in hot pink), which we know can be hard to come by, in the ami world.

(still refining my English Pork Pie pattern, so more on that later)