I am a little obsessed with Manic yarn’s crochet skeleton pattern, I came across it a few weeks ago now, and it won’t let me rest. On first glance, the pattern is a little overwhelming, there are toes and fingers and clavicles and pelvic bones, along with tibias, femurs, and ribs. When thinking about what to crochet first, I decided to start at the top, reasoning that if the only thing I did was make a crochet skull, I would still have a recognizable object to put on my desk.

And today, that vision of a crochet skull for my desk came one step closer to reality when my first effort, named Yoricka, got her eyes and nose. As pleased as I was, her future desk companion, Frida, looked decidedly unimpressed:

But whether or not Frida was impressed, as I neared completion of the skull (I still need to embroider the mouth), I also felt a weird combination of confident and overwhelmed.

I had successfully crocheted a skull, but that didn’t mean I could crochet an entire skeleton, and since I have so many plans for this pattern if I am able to execute it, I decided I would try crocheting a foot.

Yoricka was always meant to be a stand-alone skull, but the white skull I crocheted was meant to be the top of my first ever completed skeleton, so I tracked down my white yarn, my 3.25 mm hook and got to work on a foot. Fortunately, the instructions continue to be excellent, and in no time, I had a foot’s worth of crochet toes ready:

With the five tootsies all in a row it was time to move on and join them.

Again, the instructions were spot on, and I was able to get this far before I needed to take my dog for a walk:

It can be a little intimidating to start a gazillion piece crochet project that, in addition to yarn and felt, requires 14 gauge galvanized wire and electrical tape, but there is also a real satisfaction translating the words of the pattern into stitches on your hook that then become pieces of something much larger than the sum of its parts.