Did I really finish it? 

A sense of accomplishment wells inside me as seven little eyes stare at me from the table.  

It’s been a long and frustrating couple months as I worked on the challenge my fiance gave me. 

I had just finished a creating a dragon egg dice bag for one of our D&D players, my brother actually, and my fiance just kind of gives me a really excited look and says, “Beholder! You should make a Beholder!” 

So I start searching and showing him different patterns already available. Both of us can be a bit picky and couldn’t find anything we liked. His next words, “Bet you can’t make one.” 

Boy, does he know me or what? 

Challenge accepted!

I started wrapping my head around designing a crochet pattern. It wasn’t easy. I had to figure out a lot of things. Mainly, the eye stalks. How was I going to make them look real enough that I would be satisfied? Or how about whether it would be best as a drawstring or zippered? Where should the opening be? I made three before I was happy. The last one ended up perfect and I wrote the pattern along the way so it was easier at the end though my notes were a bit of a mess.

I think the most helpful thing in the process was my fiance, Mike, who dealt with all my irritation when something didn’t work and my excitement when it went as planned. His criticism and ideas when I was stuck or dissatisfied with something. Having someone that you respect their opinion can be a gold mine. Also helps when they don’t know your craft so they have no preconceived notions whether it will work or not.

The above Beholder was version one. Initial thought process was that it would “eat” the dice and the teeth would be behind the zipper. I hated how this one looked. Picky, remember? However, I loved how the eyestalks came out. Time to redesign. Move the opening from the mouth to the back and change the main eye.

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With this Beholder, I changed the main eye to look like a cat’s eye. I also moved the zipper to the back and tried to do an open mouth with teeth. I also slowly made the bottom slowly to try and do a gaping mouth effect. That didn’t work out so well. So on to another redesign.

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With this version, I was very happy. I found a technique from another designer called the Open Mouth Technique and used that to great effect. A smaller hook for the teeth so they weren’t huge and moved the zipper to the top of the Beholder. I was finally happy. Now to decipher my notes and create the pattern for testing.

With the pattern now in testing, it’s off to my next project!

If you would like to purchase this pattern, it is now available at our Etsy Shop.

More Coming Soon!