Brontosaurus

Each brontosaurus is made from 100% cotton yarn, unless requested otherwise. Other color palates available upon request. Please allow a month of production time. Because the brontosaurus is hand-made, and the list of orders has no promised length, expedited production time is not possible, although we don’t expect it to take a full four weeks.

Ordering process

To order your wrap email me at dressedlilies@gmail.com, and we’ll get all the details sorted out! 🙂

(If you’re like me, you’re not here for the product but the pattern. Well, my dears, this lovely pattern comes from Tones of Home Ky. Have fun, and happy making!)

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blue crocheted brontosaurus sitting in front of a wall on carpeted floor — Brontosaurus Blue sitting down, frustrated

blue and yellow crocheted dinosaurs set against a white backdrop — brontosaurus blue and yellow

Adelaide was a strange old lady. That was basically just proven fact.

The woman lived in a modest mansion at the edge of town. No one knew where the money came from, or whether she’d bought the mansion or inherited it. She wasn’t bad strange–it wasn’t like no one ever saw her, or that she was the kind of person you’d cross the street to avoid. Quite the opposite, actually. Everyone knew her, and everyone knew that, if you were having a bad day and she noticed, she’d usher you into her house, put down a plate of still-warm cookies, and suddenly you’d be spilling your guts to her–whether or not you’d talked with her before that day. Everyone knew that.

Picture of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk on a wooden table with a cookie jar in the background

What Amista didn’t know–what wasn’t proven fact–was how one was supposed to get out of the house.

Adelaide had given her the cookies, told her to stay as long as she needed–that she had a few errands to run. The old woman was naive as well as dripping with wealth. Amista could’ve done anything–taken anything–while the woman was gone. Would Adelaide have noticed? Doubtful. There’s so much in the house, there’s no way she can remember it all. It’s almost like Adelaide wanted to be stolen from.

Of course, while Amista could’ve taken anything–far too easily–her parents had raised her better than that. Unfortunately.

In all reality, though, that was probably a good thing, considering Amista was currently trapped in the house like some trespassing tomb robber in a Pharoah’s pyramid, and the last thing she needed was a vengeful mummy trying to get her treasure back.

She almost wouldn’t put it past Adelaide to have a mummy somewhere in here.

There was no way the house was this big. She had to just be getting lost.

Right?

Finally, Amista stops in the center of the hallway, huffing a frustrated grunt. She needed a better strategy than this to find her way out of here–her roommates would be worried, and she had exams she needed to study for.

She’d settle for a window to crawl out of, at this point. As she continues down the hall, then, she starts trying door handles. Finally, she finds one that isn’t locked.

It’s pretty easy to find the window of the room, as there’s light coming through it. The window, too, is unlocked. Thankfully, she’s still on the first floor and it’ll be only a few feet’s worth of a drop.

“What are you doing?” a small, soft voice asks as Amista is halfway out of the window. This question is followed by several voices shushing the speaker, all sounding relatively similar to the first. She jumps and falls back to the hardwood floor.

Amista lifts her head and looks around, but doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

picture of a blue, crocheted brontosaurus behind a foot laying sideways on the floor

Something kicks her foot. She turns, but sees only a small brontosaurus stuffed animal. She keeps looking. “Are you okay, lady?”

Her eyes focus again on the stuffed animal. There was no way–

“Do you need help, lady?”

Definitely the dinosaur, this time. She gives a short, small scream and kicks it, sending it into the wall. It bounces off and lands on its side. The dinosaur shows no sign of pain but for shaking itself out and looking at her again. “That should’ve hurt,” it states simply, “but it didn’t, because I’m only yarn and stuffing. So I forgive you.”

“Blue…” hisses a voice, bringing Amista’s eyes toward a small closet in the wall on the right side of the window.

The brontosaurus turns its head 180 degrees like an owl to stare at a yellow brontosaurus peeking out of the closet. There’s no way that dinosaur…

“It’s okay, Yellow,” the dinosaur she’d kicked trots over on legs far too small to believably take its weight, “it’s not like she has a scissors.”

“A… scissors?” Amista repeats, wondering if Adelaide had some sort of portal to crazytown hidden in her house that Amista had managed to trip through.

a yellow crocheted brontosaurus peeking out of a closet door

“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” hisses another voice, much like the first two.

The blue brontosaurus sits down with a huff, back stubby legs flopping out to each side. “Stop being such a wet blanket, Green. She’s nice.”

“She kicked you into a wall,” Yellow states dryly.

“I scared her. You know what Adelaide says about other people.”

“That we’re not supposed to talk to them,” Green retorts.

“Yeah, well, I’m talking to her and I’m fine. Talky talky talk.”

“What… are you?” Amista asks, feeling a bit weak in the head

“Dinosaurs!” Blue chirps, jumping back up and turning around to face her again, waving a short, conical tail.

“Not real ones, though, obviously.”

“Yes real ones,” Blue sounds offended.

Amista blinks at it. “That’s… not possible.”

“Obviously, it is,” it sasses.

She lifts her brows. “How,” she retorts shortly.

“Merlin.”

Another blink. She’d definitely tripped through a portal to crazytown. That was the only explanation. “Merlin… the wizard. Of Arthurian legend?”

“I don’t know what an author-ianle-gend is, but ‘wizard’ seems pretty accurate,” Blue considers.

“Arthurian legend,” Green corrects, sounding annoyed. “You know that guy with the metal halo and shifty eyes?”

Blue tilts its head in confusion. “Was he the one with the flashy sword that hurt Blob?”

“No, that was George. Arthur was the one with the colorful outfits that hurt Yellow’s eyes.”

Blue thumps its tail against the floor, thoughtful. “Ohhhh… I do remember him. He shouted a lot.”

Amista’s jaw fell open at some point, and she doesn’t know how to close it.

“Wait,” she finally pulls herself together to croak, “you’re not telling me that you… you knew Arthur and Merlin? They were real?”

“As real as we are,” Blue prances in a circle.

“Ah. hah,” Amista says slowly and dryly. “So… what happened?” She asks, curious in spite of herself.

“He changed us. We were big, and now we’re small.”

“And yarn,” Yellow adds, “not to state the obvious.”

“And we don’t get hurt,” Blue chirps happily.

“Except by sharp things,” Green adds, eying Amista suspiciously.

“I don’t have anything sharp.”

Green doesn’t look convinced.

“So… why did Merlin… change you?”

All three of them fall quiet, and none of them will look at her.

“What? What did I say?”

Blue’s voice is far more morose than she’s come to expect from the little brontosaurus. “We were dying out rather fast. Blob wasn’t the only one who was hurt by a shiny sword.” It’d seem funny for such words to come out of the little dinosaur’s mouth if she didn’t immediately put the pieces together.

“You… were the dragons knights killed.”

Yellow turns in a distressed circle.

“It was more than just the knights,” Green whispers. “It was everything that came before that, too.”

picture of a knight in shining armor on horseback against a sunset in the background

“What came before that?”

“The flood and the freeze.”

“The… what?”

“There were times we’d nearly been wiped out, before. A giant flood, and a long freeze.”

“Noah’s flood and the ice age?”

“If that’s what humans call them.”

“What happened?”

“A flood and a freeze,” Yellow returns dryly, “what do you think happened?”

“We’d begun to regain our numbers, when the knights started searching us out,” Green murmurs.

“But Merlin was nice,” Blue’s voice seems to be regaining its bounce, “he would call me a ‘rather cute little guy’.”

Amista blinks at him, trying to remember how tall brontosauruses were, and feeling like she remembers that ‘little’ and ‘cute’ weren’t necessarily the top descriptors.

“He called all of us that,” Yellow responds. “Which is odd, because I seem to remember he didn’t even come to your knee.”

“He was kind of short. And I was rather tall.”

Yellow rolls his eyes.

“And…?” Amista prompts, feeling like they’re kind of getting off topic.

“Well, he liked us, and saw the problem, so he changed us into this.”

“Stuffed animals.”

“It’s kept us safe for this long,” Yellow retorts.

She has to agree. “But you can still talk.”

“For now.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the situation is more complicated than you might think,” a new voice breaks in.

Amista whirls around to find herself facing Adelaide. She scrambles to her feet. “I got lost,” she explains in a rush, “I wasn’t trying to snoop, I—“

Adelaide holds up a hand. “Green?”

“She kicked Blue into the wall.”

“It didn’t hurt,” Blue protests, “and, anyway, I had startled her.”

“She doesn’t have a scissors,” Yellow offers. Amista thinks that’s a good thing but can’t tell for sure.

“And you?” Adelaide turns to Amista.

“Me?”

“What do you think about them?”

“They said Merlin made them like this. The wizard?”

A nod.

“So you just… keep them here?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“…If I said NSF, would you know what I’m talking about?”

Adelaide blinks. “NSF?”

“No Sparrow Falls. I don’t think they normally take stuffed animals that were once real animals, but they protect… living stuffed animals, I guess, so it’s not like they don’t have experience. Sort of.”

Adelaide raises a silent eyebrow.

Amista takes a deep breath and considers her next words. “I have an exam tomorrow that I need to study for, if you’d show me how to get out of this labyrinth. But, after that exam… I think we should talk.”

I want one!

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