When we were in Japan I made it a point to stop into yarn and craft shops because… “Hello, my name is Stacy and I am addicted to yarn and starting knitting/crochet projects.”
I can’t remember where we were honestly, but in one of the larger kind of “big box” craft stores I found a selection of amigurumi kits. I have a couple of pregger friends and thought these would make cute, unique gifts. And unlike my more recent attempts at completing baby blankets, I thought this scale of project might actually get done in time for the births.
Scott helped me pick out a couple of kits, including this whale shark. It came with what you see pictured here – an instruction book, the two yarn colorways, and the eyes. It was all wrapped up in a little plastic box.
Do you know what didn’t occur to me when I bought it all wrapped up in that plastic box? One seriously dumb thing and one fairly reasonable thing. IT DIDN’T OCCUR TO ME THE INSTRUCTIONS WOULD BE IN JAPANESE. I have no excuse other than perimenopause brain. The other more reasonable thing was that apparently Japanese crochet patterns use an entirely different instruction method that uses symbols instead of abbreviations.
I’m not going to post a picture of the inside of this particular instruction booklet (because copyright), but here’s an example of a Japanese amigurumi pattern that I found for free on the internets. Just to give you an idea.
Um, what? Thankfully there are lovely, generous people in the world that have posted many tutorials in the form of blogs and YouTube videos so I could figure this out. It definitely helped that I’ve got a strong handle on crochet in general. Oh and shout out to Google Translate photo feature as well, of course.
The other somewhat dummy thing I did is I didn’t bother to notice that the whale shark’s mouth in the instruction booklet photo is white, and just ended up doing the whole thing in the variegated yarn.
But here’s the finished product! Despite my three layers of ignorance/mistakes, I think it turned out pretty darn cute! And when my friends in St. Louis got it in the mail they texted to say, “Thank you so much it’s adorable!”
Kjar-ied Away 