Category: Crafts

Finished Objects – 1/3

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(This post originally appeared on my Ko-Fi page on January 3, 2025.)

I have decided that, for the time being to get through the giant amount of WIPs that have been languishing in my boxes, bags, and drawers, I am going to make myself finish something before starting something new. Considering we are only 3 days into the new year, it’s going pretty well so far. I’ve finished 2 projects this week.

[A crocheted baby dinosaur with pink belly, stripes, and nostrils, gray back, tail, and limbs, and crocheted eyes with three shades of green in the iris and a white highlight sitting on an upside down tan plastic bucket.]

First is yet another Baby Dinosaur by Complicated Knots in the leftover Loops and Threads Soft Classic from my mom’s birthday present. I swear I will take a break from these and make something else for a while, unless someone wants to order a custom one. This one will be listed in the shop next week.

[A cross stitch of the faces of Garfield and Odie on black Aida fabric.]

The other is this cross stitch of Garfield and Odie by Motoruxin. By searching through my Google photos archive, I clearly started this for StitchMaynia in 2020 (the only time I ever attempted it) and then promptly set it down on June 1 with just the yellows and oranges filled in. So I finished it up over the past couple days, and am ready to fill in the last corner of this sheet (even though I am going to cut them apart and frame them individually).

[A square of black Aida fabric with Animal’s face, Stitch sideways with his mouth open toward the sky, and Garfield and Odie with an empty bottom right corner.]

I’ve just grabbed her Cookie Monster pattern because I realized I didn’t have another small pattern to go there.

For now, I’m going to stick to these weekly update styles instead of trying to write full blog posts for every single thing and then getting behind and getting too overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to finish. Especially since I am intending to finish a lot of projects that are just sitting around with minimal work left to finish them.

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Pattern Release – 3 Cross Stitch Patterns

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You may have seen me working on this Tri-Color Rose cross stitch:

A finished and framed cross-stitch of a flower with yellow, pink, and blue petals in a thick black square frame on a table with a green and white striped tablecloth.

And that I was making it several times over in order to figure out what number of stitches in each color would best balance the amount of threads versus retaining the most detail. I settled on version 3 which uses 75 colors, made sure there weren’t symbols that were too much alike in the same area, and it is now listed in my shop.

A finished and framed cross stitch of cascading hearts in rainbow colors in a thick black square frame laying on a wooden table.

While I was preparing to list the rose, I realized I didn’t have two other patterns listed here that I thought I did. The first is this rainbow hearts pattern, which comes in a bundle with the square and circle versions of the chart, both finishing at 4 x 4 inches on 14-count Aida.

A circular version of the rainbow cascading hearts pattern finished in a wooden embroidery hoop with a loop of orange thread at the top for a hanger.

And I wanted to offer this final chart as a little freebie that would make a great last-minute gift as it only uses 4 colors:

A cross stitch of a cartoon line drawing of two hands being held in a heart shape with a red heart outline in a thick black frame laying on a wooden table.

Using so few colors both makes it work up faster, and makes it easy to substitute colors for a unique gift. It’s charted as coming up to 5.3 x 5.2 inches on 14-count Aida, but this example is done on 22-count Aida and came up to 3.5 x 3.3 inches. If you want to change the Aida used for any of these patterns and figure out what size it will be, I would suggest this calculator from Thread-Bare.

If you do pick up any of these patterns, please tag me on Instagram (@caseykayb) because I would love to see your projects. My goal this next year is to release all the patterns I’ve had sitting in a “charts in progress” folder on my desktop for several years, hopefully one a month.

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Finished Object – Baby Dinosaur

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This little Baby Dinosaur by Complicated Knots was equally deceptively difficult and deceptively easy at the same time, and I can’t exactly explain it.


A crocheted baby dinosaur made in various shades of blue, teal, and purple, sits on a wooden table facing the camera.


It’s made in parts, a stuffed main body piece, head overlay, two arms, two mirrored legs, and a back panel, and then sewn together at the end.


The right side of the baby dinosaur.

I actually finished most of the pieces long before I sewed it together because I pulled one of those “putting off the easy part” moves.


The left side of the baby dinosaur.

It’s made of partial mini-skeins of Knit Picks Brava, hence way more colors than the two colors it’s supposed to be, and the back piece is slightly scrunchy, but it turned out super cute. It was very confusing, however, that I decided to pick the opposite colors of the original (blue as my dark color and purple as the light) because I would occasionally get mixed up seeing her pick up the purple where I was supposed to be using blue or vice versa.

The back of the baby dinosaur.

It was definitely fun to explore the different shaping techniques like using surface crochet to curve the legs, and to know that other people use the same “make a bunch of fingers and stick them together to make a hand” technique that I tend to use for creating hands and feet.

While this is not a beginner-friendly pattern, I would say don’t be scared to try it if it looks interesting and you have made a few Amigurumi before. My one tip is just for my fellow lefties:  when it comes to the back legs, the one you make for the “left” instructions will go on the right of the dinosaur and the “right” on the left. This is visible once the legs are finished and ready to sew on, but it might be good to remember while you are working on them.

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