Dragon Cloak

 

This is not an official pattern. I want to record some notes on how I did this project and some people were interested, so I'm putting it on a blog. I'll try to be clear and accurate but please take it with a grain of salt.

I am a size small or extra small. I'm about five-and-a-half feet tall. 

I used this yarn: 

It has 1200m (1312 yards) per skein and I used two skeins. Almost completely.

For the crocodile stitches I used an I (5.5 mm) hook. For the Tunisian crochet I used a 7 mm hook with a cable on it.

If you don't know how to do the crocodile stitch there are lots of good tutorials on YouTube. I like this one:

I did something a little different where I filled in the ends, but I figured it out as I went along and have a hard time describing it. Sorry.

You can do the crocodile stitch however you want. Just be aware that the starting chain has more chains than you end up with and it really draws up after a few rows. This caused me a few problems. For example, the hood:

 I always started with the crocodile stitch because I wanted them to be facing my face and pointing down. I did 17 "scales" on the hood - total. That turned out to be a bit short for me. I had to extend the neck portion of the cloak to make the hood long enough. So I didn't attach the scales but left them hanging loose. It works, but I would probably have a longer front panel if I did it again.

The solid portions are all done in Tunisian half double. I'll include the tutorial I used. The only difference in what I did is that I don't do the extra chain stitch at the beginning of rows as recommended on the tutorial. It doesn't look right when I do it.

I single crocheted along the top edge of the crocodile section to establish a base for the Tunisian. I found that about four stiches per scale came out flat and even. I did 22 rows of half double for the hood and then joined the seem by slip stitching it together. 

The neck/shoulder section started with 35 scales. I think I came up with a total of 140 Tunisian half doubles. I decreased every 14 stitches in the second row and then each decrease came after one less stitch across for twelve rows. Then I went straight up for another six rows for 45 stitches, centered.

The middle section has the same number of scales and 140 Tunisian half doubles all the way across. The arm slits are 20 stitches in. You just have to do it in separate sections.

The bottom section has 45 scales. I decreased every sixteen stitches and then each decrease came after one less stitch for twelve rows. Then I did eight more rows without decreasing.

I didn't bind off the Tunisian crochet sections but joined them with the crocodile sections using slip stitch.

I think that's it. I wish I hadn't made the bottom section so wide because then I could have made the middle section wider and it would have closed better. Also, I would prefer to have the arm slits a little lower. But this was also forced by the amount of yarn I had as I did the middle section last and was playing yarn chicken the whole time.

If you have questions I can try to answer but I'm not a pattern designer so....