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 Goggle-Eyed Duck Charm. |
| What you make | A small stuffed yellow duck with a big orange bill, two round cream eyes sitting on top of it, a pear-shaped body, two little wings, and two long orange legs that dangle, each ending in a fan of four pointed toes. |
| Finished size | About 7 cm (2¾ in) tall from the top of the eyes to the feet, and about 3.5 cm (1⅜ in) across the bill. |
| How long it takes | About 1½ hours. |
| Hook | 2.0 mm. |
| Yarn | 4-ply cotton, about a US sport weight, in golden yellow, orange-red and cream. Use the same weight for all three: the eyes are sized against the bill. |
| Yarn needed | About 7 g (20 yd) of yellow, 2 g (5 yd) of orange and 1 g (5 yd) of cream — about 10 g (30 yd) in all. |
| Skill level | Advanced beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: spiral rounds, an invisible decrease, one colour change, a little point worked into a round, a chain-started foot, and some sewing. |
| Techniques used | Starting with a magic ring · continuous spiral rounds with a stitch marker · chain, slip stitch, single crochet, half double crochet and double crochet · the single crochet increase and the invisible decrease · changing colour at the start of a round · a little pointed tip made with two chains and a slip stitch · starting on a chain and working back along it · stuffing a small piece and closing it through the front loops · sewing parts together and weaving in ends |
| Worked in | Continuous spiral rounds, with a marker in the first stitch and no joins. The yarn-under single crochet and the invisible decrease — both explained in the pattern, with what changes if you crochet the usual way. |
| The bill | The head is a flat circle, from 6 to 36 stitches in six rounds, the last round in orange. Folded in half, the orange edge makes the two lips of the bill, held with a few stitches at each end. |
| The body | A little pear: it grows to 18 stitches in three rounds, holds for two, then comes down in four decrease rounds to 6, with a plain round after each of the first two. It is stuffed before the last two rounds and closed through the front loops, and its tail makes a five-chain neck for the head to sit on. |
| The eyes | Two small domes, each a yellow cup of 12 stitches and a flat cream disc of 12, sewn together edge to edge with a pinch of fiberfill inside, then sewn side by side on top of the bill. The black pupils in the photos are yours to add. |
| The wings and feet | Each wing is one round of shaping, 5 stitches out to 8, with a little chained point. Each foot is a chain of eight with four double crochets fanned out of one chain, each with its own little point. |
| Number of pieces | Ten: the head, the body with its neck, two eye backs, two eye fronts, two wings and two feet. |
| Count checkpoints | Six: 18 and 36 at the ends of the head’s rounds 3 and 6; 18, 12 and 6 at the ends of the body’s rounds 3, 8 and 11; and 8 at the end of each wing. |
| Sewing | Each eye’s two halves, then the eyes, wings, feet and head, are sewn on with their own long tails. Glue is optional — to hold the eyes while you sew, and to fix the knots inside. |
| Keychain | Your own hardware, fixed at the top of the head — the photos show a key ring with a star-shaped clasp and a bell, and a phone-strap cord on a small clasp. The pattern ends at the finished duck, before the hardware. |
| Also needed | About 1 g of fiberfill, a stitch marker and a yarn needle. Pins, tweezers and a little craft glue are optional. |
| Pages | 19 |
| 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 has the same stitches and the same count, you are simply working in the other direction, and the duck comes out a mirror image of the photos. The wing’s point and the feet come out on the other side of each piece, which makes no difference once they are sewn on. |
| 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 yellow circle with its orange edge, before it is folded; the body, stuffed, held between finger and thumb; and the two feet, each a fan of toes on a chain leg, beside the two wings, their yarn tails still hanging. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The flat circle is the one to look at. Six rounds with an orange edge — fold it in half, and that edge is the bill.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated duck.
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 duck, the likeliest place for that is round 8 of the body, and the reason is the round before it. The body starts coming down with a round of decreases and then a plain one, twice over, and round 7 is a plain round of 15. Round 8 has to decrease again, once after every three stitches, to 12. Work it plain like round 7 and you have three too many — and you would only find out at round 10, with the body already stuffed, when its decreases don’t come out even. So round 8 ends on a checkpoint, and if you are three over, it tells you why.
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 end of round 8: 12 stitches. If you have three too many, it tells you why — the round was worked plain like round 7, when it has a decrease after every three single crochets. This is page 13 of the 19 you get, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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