Spiral crochet

I was playing around with 3 dimensional shaping ideas and, at the same time, wanted to make a baby safe gift for some friends who's little one is turning a year old soon. I wanted to see if I could make a basic tube shape form into a spiral. What better way to test this out than to make a snake!



To make the spiral shape, I worked an invisible decrease, as described at Planet June on one side of the tube, while doing an increase on the opposite side, with a bit of a difference. The increase/decrease is worked in "short" of the total number of stitches. In this case, the body of the snake is made up of 18 sc, but the rounds were worked as though there were 17 sc. I did an invisible decrease (1 stitch) plus 7 sc (8 stitches), did an increase (10 stitches), then finished with another 7 sc (17 total). This meant that each increase or decrease stitch was offset from the previous row, helping to create the slow spiral shape. I had originally thought to do 2 increases/decreased on each side, which would've made the spiral much stronger, but I didn't like how it was looking and started over.




After finishing the body, I sewed the eyes on (better for baby chewing than hard eyes), then attached red yarn to the front to make a short tongue. I used a double thickness of yarn, made a few chains, slip stitched back to the start, then sewed the ends of the yarn in very thoroughly. It should withstand being yanked on fairly well.

I hope baby likes it. :-D