Wonky Crocheted Seal

Let me preface this by saying I never understood crocheting...  but I always attempted to make a scarf when the winter season started rolling in because who doesn't want a homemade scarf to add a little pizzazz to an outfit?  I always thought making a scarf would be sooooo easy since it's just a long rectangular shape, but no... You have to count your rows and make sure you have the same amount of stitches, and my stitches would always be too tight and then too loose, and there are numbers and patterns you have to follow to get something cute and my scattered brain doesn't do well with that... By the end of it my scarves always ended up looking like a long, stretched out piece of pizza.... And not the good kind that you'd see on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don't know, maybe I should have stuck with it and created a new type of scarf trend.  Maybe call it the Epic Fail Scarf or the Wonky Scarf or the I Don't Know What the Heck I'm Doing Scarf.  To my dismay my attempts always ended in me pulling out all of the rows until it was a long, and somewhat wonky-looking string again.  Then I would sadly roll the string back into a ball until next year when the winter season came upon us again and I'd try my hand at creating a cute scarf to warm my little neck. As if a year of not crocheting at all would make me a better crocheter?  And then failure would inevitably occur...

I had all but given up hope until I met a new friend who crochets adorable squishy animals. When I asked her how she created these darling creatures the words out of her mouth were pure magic, "I just make it up :)".

You can do that?!  Oh my I must try!  So she showed me a few tricks and broke down the process into thinking about shapes.  So she taught me how to make a cylinder and then how to make a sphere, and mantra the entire time we were working she kept repeating, "It doesn't have to be perfect."  Boy did that ring a bell.  That's how I taught art to my little kiddo's during student teaching (or my friends who have crafted with me :-P).  

So I decided to make my favorite animal, a seal :)

He's not perfect, but it was my first attempt and a little wonkiness tends to make things more adorable (at least for me they do!).

Of course whenever I get out my camera Gingi decides he wants to be in on the action so he plopped his plopper right on down beside my crocheted creation for some pictures.  This one reminds me of those hilarious photobombing pictures.

Much like these only slightly less terrifying hahaha!

 

Every time my friend saw the seal she would say, "He's so fluffy!" -Despicable Me quote :)