I decided to use this pattern to make a stuffed version of a horse my mom loved dearly growing up. Her horse’s name was Velvet Queen, and her dad sold her without telling my mom. It broke her heart, and she’s had trust issues ever since. I found some old photos of Velvet Queen and decided to make her as a Christmas gift.

The horse’s name was Velvet Queen, so it was only appropriate to use a velvety chenille yarn. I loved the size this created, and was able to vary the yarn colors to mimic the horse’s markings.

If I have any “complaint” about this pattern, it’s only that it can be easy to lose your place. Even using a stitch marker, I found myself out of place a time or two and having to improvise, because it’s reeeeally difficult to go back and count to figure out where you are. And before you blame it on my color changes, those actually helped me figure out where I was a time or two! Fortunately, the pattern also sort of lends itself to improvisation.

I used yarn I had on hand for the mane. Mom said before that her hair was a mixture of black and brown, so I mixed the yarn - mostly black with brown “highlights?” I then painstakingly untwisted every strand, which resulted in a fun and luxurious head and tail full of crimped hair! I would have loved to leave it that way, but there was SO MUCH of it that it was too heavy and she wouldn’t stand under the weight. I really wanted her to stand, and also to be more realistic to the photos. So, after a lot of research into how to straighten yarn, I very carefully used a flat-iron on the lowest possible heat setting, without combing, to end up with straight hair. Then I trimmed it up as much as I dared to allow her to still stand.

If I’d used any wiring for support, I would totally have left the fluffy crimpy hair the way it was. Since I didn’t comb the mane and tail before flat ironing (because I tried it on a practice piece and the fibers were too short to support brushing and still have a good result), the hair was a little stringy. But mom was delighted. She said that horse hair is kind of stringy anyway. And just like I expected she would, she cried.