Character Name: Margaret “Mags” Holt
Fandom: Realms of Peril & Glory: Liminal London
Played By: Liz Campbell
Yarn Used:
Shoes: Loops & Threads Soft Classic - Black
Pantyhose: CraftSmart Value - Mocha
Dress: CraftSmart Value - Tomato
Skin: Loops & Threads Soft Classic - Peach
Hair: Lion Brand Basic Stitch Anti-Pilling - Nutmeg
Wolf Head: Lion Brand Basic Stitch Anti-Pilling - Ebony
Basic pattern here.
Mags. I love Mags so goddamn much. She honestly puts up with so much, between the Lambeth Cooperative and then…well, Monty and Declan. She’s also such a badass when she wants to be and I love that for her (and me, honestly). I couldn’t very well do the rest of the cast and not include her. They need her to keep them in check. Originally I was going to do Mags in her work clothes—in fact I had already crocheted half a leg in grey as a pair of business casual trousers—but then I thought, why should Annie be the only one who gets to look pretty?
Mags differs from the base pattern as follows:
Shoes: Mags is described as a small woman, so I made the base chain for her foot one stitch smaller and adjusted the pattern accordingly - meaning she’s not skinny, just petite. Her shoes would be high heels, but, you know, it’s hard to do that in yarn, so. As for the legs, I thought about it and decided that Mags is probably one of those people who just grabs the first set of hose she finds rather than trying to match them with her actual skin tone, so they’re a bit darker than the rest of her.
Dress: Literally made for her by tiny magical mice (suck it, Zack, that’s canon now), so it of course fits her perfectly. I did the same front loop/back loop zigzag I did with Azu, Alice, Pyrex, and Maddie. She was already a few stitches skinnier than usual, so I decided to give her a bit of an hourglass figure that she probably hides in off-the-rack clothes. I did two decreases on each side to pinch the waist in, crocheted a straight round, and then did two increases on each side to open it back up again. I also figured the dress wouldn’t be too low-cut, so while I did switch to the skin a bit lower than usual, I didn’t give her a plunging neckline or anything. I think it worked. For the skirt portion of the dress, I joined to the sticking-out loops and crocheted as follows:
R1-3: Ch 3 (counts as first dc), dc in each st around, sl st in third ch (32 dc).
R4-6: Ch 4 (counts as first trc), trc in each st around, sl st in fourth ch (32 trc).
R7-8: Ch 3 (counts as first dc), dc in next 3 st, hdc in next 6 st, sc in next 4 st, hdc in next 6 st, dc in next 6 st, trc in next 4 st, dc in next 2 st, sl st in third ch (12 dc, 12 hdc, 4 sc, 4 trc).
I decided to give her a fancy waistband, too, partly because it seemed to fit and partly because I envisioned the dress as a sheath dress and didn’t like the obvious skirt. I joined the yarn to the top of the skirt and:
R1-3: Ch 1, (sc in next 2 st, ch 7, skip next 6 st) 4 times, sl st in first sc (8 sc, 28 ch).
R4: Ch 1, (sc in next 2 st, ch 3, sc around all 3 chains below, ch 3) 4 tmes, sl st in first sc (12 sc, 24 ch). Fasten off.
Head: In keeping with the “small woman” theme, I stopped one round of increase early, did two straight rounds, added the nose, and then did three straight rounds before I started decreasing.
Arms: I made her arms a little smaller to match the rest of her—starting with a round of 4 instead of 5 and keeping decreases down to match. I also tried crocheting in a spiral rather than joining at the end of every round and, reluctantly, I think I have to admit I like it better. At the top, I attached a length of red yarn, chained eight, stitched it to the other side, and then finished the neckline in a whip/blanket stitch before repeating over the other arm and along the back.
Hair: Naomi and Liz described Chantal as giving Mags a fancy updo, so I tried to convey that here. For…reasons, it ended up set a little further back on her head than I meant, so on a whim, I grabbed a scrap of the red yarn I had trimmed off and whipped up a little rose for her hair. Shockingly, that pulled it all together, I think.
Now. Underneath the hair…
Wolf: I am so goddamn proud of this.
Basically, what I did is I made a cone similar to the way I did her hands, kept it small, and then opened up into a big circle. I made the face mask in the round, expanded the sides out a bit, and squared off the bottom to align with the neck. For Mags’ hair, I turned the face inside out, pulled up long loops of brown yarn around the edge, and hooked them over the inverted nose. Once I’d gone all the way around, I stitched a loop of black yarn in to hold it together. Then I turned the face side back out and sewed it to the edge of the hairline (which I stitched in black rather than the brown of her hair).
At that point, it could be flipped back and forth easily. I’m SO happy this came out the way I wanted it to.