Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | A written crochet pattern, delivered as a PDF. The file itself is titled The Goofy Frog. |
| What you make | A small, flat green frog: a head folded into a wide mouth with a red tongue curling out of one corner; two eyes on top, each a green back and a white front with a black pupil, one pupil bigger than the other; a flat diamond body on a long neck; and four skinny arms and legs with three toes each. |
| Finished size | About 9 cm (3½ in) tall from the top of the eyes to the toes, and about 3.5 cm (1⅜ in) across the head. |
| How long it takes | About 1¼ hours. |
| Hook | 2.0 mm. |
| Yarn | 4-ply cotton, about a US sport weight, in green, red and white. |
| Yarn needed | About 7 g (20 yd) of green, 1 g (5 yd) of red and 1 g (5 yd) of white — about 9 g (30 yd) in all. Leftovers will do. |
| Skill level | Advanced beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: joined rounds, a small piece worked in turned rows, chain-built limbs, and gluing and sewing to finish. |
| Techniques used | Starting with a magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one with a slip stitch · starting on a chain and working back along it into one loop of each chain · working in rows, turning at the end of each one · chain, slip stitch and single crochet · the single crochet increase and decrease · sewing parts on and gluing small parts in place |
| Worked in | Joined rounds for the head and eyes, turned rows for the body. The chain at the start of a round or row never counts as a stitch. The ordinary single crochet, through both loops. Along a chain, one loop of each chain, always starting in the 2nd chain from the hook. |
| The head and mouth | A flat circle that grows by six stitches a round, from 6 to 36 in six rounds, folded in half with the neck in the fold. One small spot of glue in the middle closes the mouth over the neck; the rest of the mouth stays free. |
| The tongue | One row of nine single crochets along a chain of ten, in red. It curls a little by itself. Its tail end is glued inside the fold, hidden in the mouth, with the curl showing — straight out or to one side. |
| The body and neck | A flat diamond worked in rows: 3 stitches, out to 5 and then 7, two plain rows, then back down to 5, 3, 2 and 1. Then one-stitch rows for the neck, as many as you like — a longer neck sets the head higher. |
| The arms and legs | Four, all the same: a chain of ten with three little toes in slip stitch at the end. Two go near the top of the body and two at the bottom, wherever looks right to you. |
| The eyes | Each is a green cup of 12 stitches with a flat white disc of 12 glued on the front. A flat-back black eye goes on each white — one about 5 mm, one about 4 mm — set one looking up and one looking down. |
| Keychain | Your own hardware, fixed at the top of the head between the eyes — the photos show a key ring on a short chain, a clasp on a bag and a phone-strap cord. The pattern ends at the finished frog, before the hardware. |
| Number of pieces | Eleven: the head, four arms and legs, the body with its neck, two eye backs, two eye fronts and the tongue. |
| Count checkpoints | Four: 18 and 36 at the ends of the head’s rounds 3 and 6; 7 at the end of the body’s row 4, where it is widest, and 3 at row 8. |
| Sewing and glue | The arms, legs and head are sewn on with their own tails. The tongue, the mouth, each eye’s two halves, the eyes and the black pupils are glued. |
| Also needed | Two flat-back black eyes, about 5 mm and 4 mm; craft glue; a yarn needle; a stitch marker, if you like one. No fiberfill. |
| Pages | 16 |
| Printing | The instructions are real text, not pictures of text — so you can search them, copy them, enlarge them, or have them read aloud. |
| Terminology | US crochet terms |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written: every round and row has the same stitches and the same count, you are simply working in the other direction, and your frog comes out a mirror image of the photos. The limbs, tongue and eyes are placed by eye, so put them where they look right to you. |
| Delivery | Download link on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Real crochet, captured while it was being made
You have learned to zoom in on a listing photo looking for stitches that don’t join up. You should — the shops selling patterns behind pictures that were never crocheted are real, and there are a lot of them.
So here is the unglamorous version: the head as a flat green circle, the hook still in its edge; the body, a flat diamond with its neck, held up in the fingers; and the head folded in half between finger and thumb, the red tongue tucked into the fold and curling out. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The flat circle is the one to look at. It is six plain rounds and nothing else — the whole face, mouth and all, is that circle folded in half.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated frog.
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you.
On this frog, the likeliest place for that is the body, because it is the one piece worked in rows. Every row turns on a chain 1 that doesn’t count, and the first stitch goes into the last stitch of the row before — work into the chain instead, or skip that stitch, and the row gains or loses one at the edge. On a diamond only seven stitches across at its widest, one stitch changes the shape. So the body has two checkpoints: 7 at the end of row 4, where it is widest, and 3 at row 8, on the way back down to the neck.
Counted twice means you can tell. No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and handing it to someone without an apology.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
That box is the body at its widest: 7 stitches at the end of row 4. Every row above it ends on the chain 1 that doesn’t count, and the second box, 3 at the end of row 8, is on the next page. This is page 10 of the 16 you get, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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