My Pet Dragon

My very own pet dragon! Isn't he the cutest?!  This is my first try at multi-weave, semi-free form chainmaille.  Multi-weave for the combination of Dragonback, Byzantine, Box, and Mobius; semi-free form for improvising the neck and adding the paws.  I followed the fantastic tutorial by Derailed on MAIL.  The step by step instructions are easy to follow, lots of pictures and arrows pointing at where to add rings, that's how I like to read tutorials :-)  BTW, this is Derailed's dragon that got me hooked, cute and ferocious!

The tutorial describes the main body with scales.  I added the paws, only because all the dragons that I grew up with (yes, I grew up with dragons, in movies, paintings, novels) always have paws.  They also have whiskers and antennas, but I don't know how to add those yet...  I'd imagine some wire work would do it, like the way Corvus does hers (check out her copper dragon here, specially the tongue!)

Oh, and my dragon also wears shoulder pads and hoop earrings.  Very fashionable:-)  Can you see the earrings?  Big old double hoops!  The shoulder pads/cape is a slight variation from the tutorial. I learned it from Derailed's other maille critters, check them out here, seriously awesome!

OK, back to my guy; he's flexible enough to curl up for nap.  The neck moves very well; the body section from neck to belly is kind of stiff compared to rest of the body, my guess is because I fussed so much over the shoulder pads that I added a few too many rings.  Anyhow, he'll curl up all right, even chase after his own tail:-)  Awww, the poor thing is pooped from all the jumping and posing all day; it's a lot of hard work to look so adorable:-)

Specs:

All rings are stainless steel, WD 1.2mm, 3/16" ID from C&T Designs, and 5/32" ID from Blue Buddha (F18 SSTL); scales are bright aluminum also from Blue Buddha.  I did have to use 2 larger rings (1/4" ID) to include the key ring into the box weave at his jaws.  That's it.  Not very ring hungry, but my hands were totally out of commission for a while (Advil helped:-)