Afterthoughts:

Somehow I didn’t realize that the X-shaped single crochet stitch was so important to this pattern. Reading comprehension fail on my part, but I thought it was just a suggestion, not that it was the intention that you use this stitch for the entire pattern. Honestly, it doesn’t make a huge difference, but I think some things on my mermaid were slightly off-kilter as a result. The X-shaped SCs tend to stack more, rather than skew the way a regular SC does. This actually does make a difference when you’re trying to embroider the face. Mine turned out fine, but after considerable trial and error because I couldn’t do it exactly by the chart due to the skew of my SCs.

I also decided that I wanted my mermaid to have more hair. I actually love the length I went with. Just added some extra chains (don’t remember how many, unfortunately). I actually ran out of yarn before getting all the way around the circle. (Possibly I misread something there and put too many locks, but I don’t think that’s what happened.) The poor girl’s hair was SO heavy that once she was all put together, her head couldn’t be supported by the body and neck. Her head flops right over. “Like a ragdoll!” people say. But that’s not what I was hoping for… If I made another, I would either avoid adding length to her hair, or just do loose yarn strands rather than curling locks.

Still happy with her, and her little buddy (who should ALSO be made with the X-shaped SC). Gonna make a photo-prop baby-sized tail with the leftover yarn so that Marlow can match her doll.