Victory Barnyard 1942 - Henrietta the Chicken

I've wanted to make something out of this booklet for a while but hesitated because I had very little idea what the projects would look like when they were done. The chicken seemed like a good choice. 

The pattern says to use J & P Coats Knit-Cro-Sheen; three balls of cream, two of dark yellow and one each of salmon and beige to make the chicken, basket and three chicks. The thread is "held double" throughout the pattern. To go with that thread held double, they suggest a size 4 steel hook (2 mm). You will also need cotton batting and black beads for eyes. 

I decided to use sport weight yarn and a 2.25 mm hook instead. They do give a gauge and I was pretty close to it with my yarn and hook choice. I used Red Heart Luster Sheen for the chicken, Knit Picks Brava Sport for the basket and scraps of pinkish and yellow-orange yarn for the wattle and the bill. I had the perfect shank buttons for the eyes so I didn't use beads.

The directions for the chicken are not easy to read. It's done in three pieces, one for each side and then a gusset in the middle. The pieces give the directions for the head side of the piece you're working on and then say, "at the same time" make these increases and decreases on the tail side. I had to write it out by row. Here's my chicken-scratch:

It also uses a lot of measurements - things like "work until piece measures 5 inches from starting chain". That's great unless your gauge is different. You can see I have some estimates of how many rows I need based on my gauge. 
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When you get all of the pieces done you have two chicken sides, a gusset, two pieces for the comb, two pieces for the wattle and a beak.

The assembly instructions say, "Place Gusset on under side between Body pieces, sew in place. Sew up Body, leaving an opening. Stuff, sew up opening." I decided to place the center of the gusset on the center of the starting chain at the bottom of the chicken. I think that worked pretty well. It also wants you to satin stitch with the beige thread on the chicken like the illustration to give it the little feather lines. I skipped that.

The basket came together pretty easily but it says to stuff the basket and it's an open basket. I didn't think I'd like the look of white stuffing so I made some different choices for the hay/stuffing part of the basket. I considered using cut up paper like you would use for an easter basket but didn't want to pay for it when I had other things I could use at home (in the spirit of WW2). I used some fuzzy yarn to give it a hay like color and then used scrap yarn and fiber fill inside.

Here's the finished chicken.

Now for the scoring:
Is the pattern easy to understand? Enough so I didn't give up but it wasn't written in a way that made sense from end to end. 0.50
Does it look like the photo or illustration? 0.75 It sort of does considering that the illustration doesn't show a crocheted end product.
Would someone wear or use this? Yes. It's a cute chicken. 1.0
Did I enjoy making it? Mostly. 0.75
​Total score = 3

Even though this only got a 3 it turned out to be one of my favorite projects. Emotional support chicken patterns in crochet and knitting have been super popular and while this one looks nothing like those it still found a home as a support chicken with someone who loves her for her unique style.