Drakena the Dragon

So instead of calling me “dragon” in your tongue, you’ll call me “Dragon” in some other tongue. – Draco, Dragonheart (1996)

For my first official knitting and crochet post, I thought I’d show you my most recently completed project.  Meet Drakena.  She is crocheted out of a bulky-weight yarn and stands on a worsted-weight crochet glove.

One of the things I wanted for a long time was a  dragon puppet or plush doll designed sit on your shoulder.  I hadn’t found one that I liked enough to purchase and had it in the back of my head that I could make one.

My friend Maryann and I got talking about attending DragonCon 2014.  I decided if I was going across the country to attend DragonCon, bringing my larger costumes wouldn’t be feasible.  While the Klingon or Jedi costume might get a lot of attention, both would be too hot to wear all day at the height of summer.  So I figured I would wear a corset and skirt or maybe some sort of fannish t-shirt.  That got me thinking about the dragon I’ve wanted, and I decided to make one.

Originally I wanted to have it hanging around my shoulders, legs draped like a stole and head on level with mine.  The problem was that the wings would be behind my head where they wouldn’t be seen and poking into my neck.  That was when the idea of a dragon on my arm popped into my head.  Not a bracelet style that curled around my wrist, but one that I would carry on my forearm like a hunting falcon.

I immediately started poking around Ravelry, and found a few patterns I liked before settling on a wyvern-style one .   I increased the size of the yarn used from worsted to bulky to get a larger animal, exchanged the E-hook for a G-hook, and figured out a rough wire frame for the tail and legs and glove to support her weight.  I already had a pattern in mind for a gauntlet and followed the instructions as written.

For how much work I did on the fly, it came out amazingly well.  Drakena, which is Greek for female dragon, came out just as I pictured she would.  She balances extremely well, so I won’t have to wrap her tail around my wrist.  The ridge down her spine is made the same way the horns are, only with a lot more repeats.  She took roughly four days to complete, to the exclusion of working on anything else.  I’ll be carrying her around when I’m at BayCon as a practice run and make any alterations needed before I go to DragonCon.