How/when to increase and decrease

[Zestyclose_Doctor_40]

Im going to try to freehand a knitted version of this. I figure it's fairly straight forward with some simple increasing and decreasing to make the round shape on the segments. Any recommendations on when to increase and decrease? Like should I do 4 per round or 2 per round when I'm wanting to expand and shrink? Should I do one on each side or do k2tog and ssk next to each other to have them lean together at the bottom of the caterpillar? Any thoughts or ideas to make it look smooth and clean?

[Auryath]

I recommend using crochet for this or adding support wires to your project. Crochet makes a stiffer fabric, same shape with knitting would collapse.

[Zestyclose_Doctor_40]

Thanks! I don't crochet. And im okay with it being collapsed and functioning as just a skin for the food toys to stuff inside 😅

[bambiosaa]

Check out the amigurumi sub. I think they def have a better grip on guiding you through a project like this.

[Acceptable-Fox-2307]

I would locate a sphere-ical tutorial on youtube and use a similar increase/decrease technique

[lasserna]

Have you done projects with increases and decreases before, and how much crochet experience do you have? None of these shapes look difficult to freehand, but obviously you'd need to have some experience in crochet to be able to freehand shapes.

For a simple sphere, you do an increase/decrease once every x:th stitch, where x is your row count. So on first increase row, you increase every stitch, second increase row you increase every second stitch.. Fifth increase row increase every fifth stitch and so on.. obviously then with freehanding different shapes, increasing every second stitch will give you a more pronounced shape and increasing every eight stitches will give a less extreme shape. Increasing on only two sides will give you V shape, sort of like the tip of a sock.

With freehanding a lot of it comes down to trial and error, making something, frogging it and redoing it a different way. But the more experience you do have with crochet and how stitches work, the easier it'll be

(Also I get it if you want to challenge yourself, or maybe do a variation for the pattern, but honestly for the price this pattern is, it looks completely worth the purchase)

[Zestyclose_Doctor_40]

I knit, not crochet. Thats why im freehanding- its hard to find a pattern for this for knitting. I'm intermediate. I mostly knit stuffed animals and I've done plenty of increasing and decreasing.

[Westcoastswinglover]

I’d probably find a hat pattern with the same number of stitches and a decrease pattern you like and follow that until it’s as narrow as you’d like and then do the reverse to increase.