I have come close to a melt down over a crochet pattern, this year.
For the past few years, I have either knitted or crocheted a toy animal, to put in dh’s stocking - I knitted a polar bear, last year, and previous years I knitted a dachshund, a sheep and a t-Rex, and crocheted a hippo.
This year I found a pattern for an elephant - you crochet a heap of pentagons, hexagons, squares and octagons, which you then tessalate into an elephant. I fell in love, when I saw a version of it which is crocheted in dark grey, with a brightly coloured saddle cloth and headpiece somit looks like an Indian elephant in a parade.
I should have known better. The hippo was made the same way, and whilst crocheting the motifs was really easy, assembling him took me three days, and lead to tears and very rude words as I went wrong over and over again, and had to try to find the yarn that was sewing it together, against the edge of the crochet, which was the same bastarding colour. More than once, I cut the wrong bit and had to re-crochet the edge of a motif. I still remember th stress.
So why, in the name of all that is holy, did I decide to do something similar this year?
I am on day 3 of construction again - not full days, but a fair chunk of time each day - and I finally cracked it at midnight last night - at which point I discovered I was 2 hexagons and an octagon short - and I might not have enough yarn left. I stayed up until 1am, crocheting as fast as I could (any crocheter or knitter knows that, if you are close to running out, going faster helps you get to the end of what you need to do,without running out - it is an article of faith).
Today I finally finished fastening it together temporarily (so undoing my mistakes was easier), and have something that looks like an elephant, so I am now seeing it together. I just hope he is right, and I can tick this off my to do list - if I have gone wrong again, I will cry.