Earlier this year, I had the idea to release a dragon pattern to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Dragon. New Year celebrations came and went, but a new pattern did not appear. Today, as I was going through notes on pattern ideas, I came across the dragon idea I had months ago and sat down to finish what I had started.
As I was finishing the booklet, my friend Linda from the Sampler Guild noted how brilliant the timing was. Today (the 23rd of April) is St. George’s Day—something that had completely slipped my mind! It’s a wonderful coincidence, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
The title of this pattern is borrowed from a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 book The Hobbit:
He had been feeling rather pleased with the cleverness of his conversation with Smaug, but his mistake at the end shook him into better sense. “Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.
When I came across a lovely 19th-century woodcut in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I couldn’t help but laugh at this crazy dragon – it had strange webbed claws and a fishtail, which didn’t seem terribly threatening. Of course, laughing at a live dragon would be extremely silly as they are ferocious and very, very smart…
This fully monochrome pattern has 4619 crosses, 131 wide and 95 high. It features only full crosses and no specialty stitches. Full details on this fun project can be found in this link here!
