My students have fallen in love with Turtle Bob this week. a cute lttle Amigurumi tortoise that I found up the pattern for when one of my students asked if they could make a tortoise.
I will always try to find patterns when students ask, as I am in a position to know what patterns are a good project for them, and which are either pooorly written or a bit of a challenge for them right now.
There are fantastic free patterns available on the web. I use a lot of them in my classes and point students to them, some are free on the website with an option to buy an ad free PDF, others are generously given and some even have how to videos (I really do love the crating communities). However, I now have a new hurdle to navigate, Ai generated patterns.
While searching for a suitable pattern (keep reading and I will share pics and the link for the adorable Turtle Bob) I found a pin on Pinterest that set off a few alarms.
On the face of it, this looked like a perfect pattern. Beginner friedly with construction looking to be spheres and some over stitching and using safetly eyes that we have. However the soft focus and the background set off a bit of an alarm for me. I clicked through to have a look at the patern and my concern went up to Def Con 3. In amongst the expected advertising were a series of pictures that didn't resemble the original one
All four pictures and 1 pattern. So I read it through. I'm not going to inflict it on you, but it wouldn't have made any of these lovely looking tortoises. In fact there weren't any instructions for the head!!!!!!
So please, be aware, check out patterns before you start making them and be especially careful of those too perfect looking pics. Another thing to be careful of is that some unscrupulous people are self pulishing books on Amazon in the sme way. Lovely looking picture on the front cover but when you buy the book (for a very reasonable fee) you will find pages of Ai generated patterns, and no pictures.
I'll link up some great sites for you to find great patterns, but for now I will leave you with Turtle Bob 🐢 and a link to his pattern.
https://pin.it/5h5vEpUBM You will need to let Goole translate it from the original Italian
Keep Crafting, Sam x
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