Crocheting a Cute Baphomet

December 28, 2023

The 2023 holiday season has been… weird. Honestly, this whole year has been unusual for my family. This being the year I changed my whole life as well… let’s just go with weird. I didn’t have it in me to make a bunch of handmade gifts, but I went ALL IN on the gift for my partner and made a super cute crochet Baphomet. I’m so proud of how it turned out!

This is not my pattern, but I found many people asking the same questions as I faced, and I also had to re-learn some tips and tricks about making amigurumi. (That’s what we call it when we make a crocheted stuffed toy like this.) Since so many people had questions and so many people choose to start crocheting with amigurumi, I thought a quick post about this project may be beneficial. For me, I had definitely forgotten some things, and spent 4-5 hours on redoing various steps and watching videos or reading other blogs to remember how to make my stitches look better. So this post also serves as a reference for myself!

The pattern is from the Etsy seller CuteCrochetByLee, and as of this writing, it’s in their shop here. I googled a TON of various phrases trying to find tips for this pattern, so I’m stacking my SEO like I, uh, don’t really know how to do, but WordPress has some tools to (supposedly) help me out. Cute Baphomet, cute crochet Baphomet, cute crochet by Lee, and so on. My search history will never be the same.

Author’s note: I updated this post after making a second Baphomet. I’ll do my best to update it as long as it makes sense to do so. If I need to make a second post, I shall.

Supplies List

Please note that the Amazon links below will be affiliate links. It doesn’t change the price you pay, but if you make a purchase through my links, I may earn a tiny commission.

3.5mm crochet hook: I have several of these from different sets. I’ve used this set a lot, and the ergonomic handles aren’t massive, but they help! It’s really nice to have a few hook sizes on hand to find what works for you.

Yarn: Paintbox Yarns Simply Aran in Rose Red and Pure Black. I bought this from LoveCrafts for a long-ago project and had some partial skeins, but I know I used less than one skein of each color. Update 1/24: On my second Baphomet, I used approximately 174 yards or 89 grams of the primary color and 78 yards or 39 grams of the secondary color.

Yarn needles: A longer one was useful to position my embroidery floss for adding details on the face, and a bent-tip metal needle helped enormously when sewing the muzzle onto the head. You don’t want to use a super sharp needle for most of this, but when adding face details with embroidery floss, I switched to a sharper needle to pierce the strands of yarn. A set like this will probably work in addition to the bent tip.

Scissors: Anything will work here.

Stuffing: I used Poly-fil fiber for most of it, plus some Poly-Pellets to make the body slightly heavier. I didn’t want to pour loose beads into the fabric, so I used a couple of cloth tea bags I’d purchased to make loose-leaf tea. The fiber was in stock at my local Joann Fabric and on sale, but I’ve linked to Amazon for convenience. I didn’t use very much of either bag.

Stitch marker: I think the author probably used something like a safety pin (I’ll explain why, later). I used one of the random plastic locking markers I already had because this set of 400 I purchased in 2019 is still going strong.

T-pins: Optional, but they helped me visualize where I would attach components, and they helped hold the horns in place while I sewed them on. I had a bunch already, something like this.

My Method

This is just a list of tips for making the amigurumi look nice, tidy, and smooth. SC = Single Crochet stitch. CH = chain stitch.

• Use front loops for all sc stitches throughout the project. This massively helps the increases and decreases blend in!
• Make sure you’re holding the work with the right side out! The dangling tail of your magic circle should be on the inside of the shape you are making.
• Starting with a magic circle is still preferable to the ch 2 method, but the first 2-3 sc have to be placed carefully to avoid the legs looking puffy/big. Make sure you’re happy with how it looks after 2-3 rounds before continuing.
• Invisible Increase: sc in both loops, then sc in front loop only of the same stitch. Thanks to the YouTuber Knit Grit for this video that made my stitches look SO NICE.
  • In this video, Knit Grit also discusses the “stacked” increase approach I mention later. It’s worth a watch!!
• Invisible decrease: the common invisible decrease, front loops only, insert hook into both, pull up a loop, then pull through both loops on the hook. This is one of many videos that demonstrate this crucial technique.
• I used a 3.5mm hook after first starting with a 3mm. I couldn’t find my 3.25, but it worked out. I did not have finger pain with the 3.5mm (I had quite a lot of physical stiffness every round I did with the 3mm). I could still stuff the pieces without big gaps in the fabric. Use the hook that doesn’t hurt your hand. I was falsely under the impression that making amigurumi has to hurt. It doesn’t!! The hook should do the work for you, keeping things tight without requiring you to use a lot of force.

Pattern specific notes

If you’ve purchased this pattern, or I linked to this post in a FB conversation about it, hello! These are all specific details for this pattern as it looked when I purchased it in December 2023. Overall, the pattern is fine, but some details are more confusing due to the verbiage or language used by the author.

• The extra sc: This is absolutely necessary to avoid making a hexagonal body and head. But you can also stagger your stitches in another way.

Here’s what happened when I DID NOT follow this approach correctly. The body is not only too tight (my 3mm hook experiment), but it is clearly hexagonal rather than making a smooth, round side.

How to do this correctly, as I understand it: When you finish a round, simply stitch one more time. That’s it. Why? It’s because of this “stacked increase” issue that is in the video I linked earlier, but also in many blog posts, here’s one I found with a diagram. So, to repeat: what I did is add one single crochet at the end of every round, and that’s the stitch I marked. I moved the marker into this extra stitch every time I finished a round.

If you don’t want to do this approach on the head/body, you can stagger your increases and decreases as described in the blog post, or in any way that works for you. Honestly, you can go off pattern with the head and body as long as they are the right sizes (the head is larger than the body!), and you may want to if you notice the head is becoming too pointy on top. Using a 6-stitch increase pattern instead of 8, as the author has us do in this pattern, can create a pointier head instead of a flatter one. I was able to stuff it into shape, but this is something you can change if you’re comfortable.

Update 1/24: I experimented with my second Baphomet and am going to adapt a little more on my next one. I used a staggered approach for decreases on the head, vs making the body with the decreases called for in the pattern, and I like the head better. You should still stick to adding the extra sc on both increases and decreases if you are using it at all, though — otherwise, the increasing/bottom of one shape will not have the same curvature as the decreasing/top of it.

This is a random reference diagram I’ve seen shared in a ton of Facebook threads without credit attached. (Please let me know if you know who created it!) The first, green circle uses 8 stitches to start and increases in that approach. The yellow circle uses 6, which is how this pattern is written. Make sure you use the 6-stitch pattern for the tail, ears, feet, and hands because that slight point is part of the design!

• Stuffing usually had to start a little before the pattern told me to, but this depends on your particular project and the size of your fingers compared to the opening. Standard amigurumi practice — just read ahead to know which pieces are stuffed and when.
• Horns: This seems to be the hardest part, based on my informal poll of Facebook threads. TL;DR for me was to make sure I added the extra sc at the end of each round, and be very meticulous in my work, but I could not completely manage to “pass” the stitch marker at each point that it was intended to. I experienced this on both horns. Update 1/24: On my second Baphomet, my horns were identical to the written pattern. I tried multiple times on my first set, so I can only guess that the difficulty of using black yarn contributed to my problem.
  • Update 1/24: For my second Baphomet, I placed my stitch marker as I usually do — through the top V of the stitch, using the extra sc as my marked stitch — and the horns worked out fine. I think one thing that may be an issue is the language used to discuss where to place the marker. What I usually call it is placing it in the last stitch, and I would put the marker beneath the top V of the stitch, like where a regular sc would be added on the next round. The pattern is written in such a way that I began to think the author meant literally putting it between the two stitches, i.e., catching the post of the stitch’s body rather than going under the loops. I think this may account for some times when you “cross” the stitch marker, even when the stitch count does not imply you would. This is my guess, and I don’t know for sure, but as you can see, I was able to make the twisty horns (and on my first try).
  • If you don’t use a stitch marker and simply follow the written directions with care not to lose count, you should end up with a twisting horn. BUT… I wonder if there shouldn’t actually be a “right horn” and “left horn” to make them symmetrical? I have no idea how that would be done. I don’t know how to make these identical to each other, but they came out good enough to look really cute! Update 1/24: With two identical horns, I positioned them so the tail end of the yarn was pointing forward on Baphomet’s right side, and rotated the other horn 180 degrees (so the tail was falling to his back). This makes a sort of U shape between the curves when viewing them from the front.
• Tail: I kept the pattern approach of adding an extra sc in each round, which I wasn’t sure I was supposed to… but I realized it doesn’t really matter. All you are doing is working in a spiral to make a tube of your desired length. By adding an extra stitch, I ended up with a long enough tail in less rows than it called for. Note that to make it easier to seam later, you should make sure the leftover tail of your magic ring is on the outside of this piece. I didn’t, and had to attach some yarn separately.
• Seaming the muzzle was tricky, but my best advice with all seaming is work back-to-front through each stitch, grab the front loop of the piece you are attaching, and ensure you do not split the yarn accidentally. The bent-tip needle I mentioned above was much easier on the muzzle. If you place the safety eyes as directed, 12 stitches apart, you have a muzzle of about that width… of course, the muzzle curves around the edges, and the eyes are wider than a single stitch, but it’s possible to center it so the muzzle attaches to the row of stitches just below the eyes. After I attached about 2/3 of the muzzle, I did add stuffing, which was not in the pattern. It helped the shape a lot, though!
• Facial details: I used black embroidery floss instead of yarn. The pattern doesn’t tell you where to put them or how to do this. The reference I used to refresh myself is this one. Basically, leave enough excess material that you can leave the ends dangling out the back, tie it off, and hide the knot inside the stuffing. Just be careful not to split your stitch when you insert the needle!
• I added a beard (by request — it’s SO cute without one, too!) I hadn’t done it before, but I found a tutorial online, of course. Honestly, this video has intrigued me, maybe I should make some wizards! I did 5 beard pieces, 3 closer to the front and 2 behind them, and I used the exact method from this video.

For general assembly, I just kind of eyeballed it and tried to be methodical and consistent. Here are a couple of pictures of my in-progress project! You can see I used the T-pins to mark where I would attach the arms. I adjusted the arm a few times, but this helped keep track.

Update 1/24: For my second Baphomet, I found the assembly to be a little more difficult, so I think on my next one, I’ll do it a little differently:

• Attach feet to body, aligning them generally underneath each eye
• Attach ears to head, using this chance to count stitches and place them symmetrically with only the eyes as a reference point
• Attach arms to body, using the position of the ears as a general guide
• Attach tail to body
• Attach muzzle to head
• Attach horns to head, using the ears as a guide for the outer curve placement

This just changes the order to put the ears on earlier, which I believe would have helped me create a more symmetrical Baphomet.

Final Thoughts

This was a fun project, although it took over 24 hours of work, including my mistakes and lessons learned. In actuality, my project timer for crocheting and some assembly was about 18.5 hours, and I stopped timing it when I did the last two sessions of assembly (but I watched 3-4 episodes of Six Feet Under as I worked). Once I realized the fabric would not show increases and decreases so obviously with front-loop-only stitches, I began to really enjoy this project. I could see myself making another cute crochet Baphomet!

Update 1/24: I’m going to offer these as commission items after making a second one. It took me much less time, even with some hiccups (such as overstuffing one of the feet and not realizing it until after it was attached). It’s still a solid 12-14 hours, including assembly, and would be longer with black yarn, but I decided to try taking some commissions! It’s launching soon on my ko-fi.

I hope this blog post was helpful to anyone else who has purchased this pattern or ends up here by some other means! If you have extra tips, or if I’ve made something sound confusing, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll edit this post if needed! If this helped you out, consider buying me a coffee on my ko-fi page. Happy crocheting!