I got very creative last week - and I'm proud of myself! We have a book club going through work, and we are reading "Water for Elephants" for next month. For each book so far, I have crocheted a bookmark - a clover for March (St. Patrick's Day), a flower and flower pot for May (May flowers), and for July, I wanted to make an elephant bookmark to go with the book. Should be easy, right? Just surf the internet for a pattern, whip them out, and.....What do you mean the internet is down? I surfed the internet on my phone, but couldn't find anything I wanted to make. Surely someone out there had a pattern for an elephant! I looked and looked, but I couldn't find anything. So....I made my own pattern.

I found this picture on the internet through my phone(which made it a very small picture!)

I drew up a quick sketch and marked it in with a diagram of stitches and took a stab at my first elephant.

Too thick...but if I adjusted it just a little bit (imagine the part where my finder is as not there) - it almost looked like an elephant!

My second attempt looked better, but...the ball was too small, and the stitches for the body a little thin.

My final project - not too shabby!

I made 8 of them for the book club, and one for Ralph - the top left one is a pink elephant, just for him! Mom helped while I was up visiting - she made the balls and I made the elephants.

I even charted out my pattern and wrote it out, just to show that I could. This is my first pattern made from scratch - anything else has always been a modification of an existing pattern.