I’m trying to be good this year by only using wool from my increasingly mountainous stash. Luckily for me, I had the PERFECT colour for a crab. Unfortunately, it was a particularly skinny 4-ply. No problem, said my brain, just reduce the hook size and it’ll be FINE. Great, I replied!

Alas, my brain failed to take into account that, the smaller the hook size, the smaller the stitches. GAH! It was also the first time I’d tried Stacey’s back-loop-only technique so I spent a lot of time squinting at my work, hook hovering in mid-air, trying to work out where I was meant to go next. The small legs were particularly tortuous until I took up Stacey’s helpful suggestion of just aiming for legs of a similar length rather than counting rounds.

For some reason, I can’t bear to see anything without a little smile so I took a length of black yarn and did a big, curving stitch across the face. I then tacked it down with some tiny stitches.

Fiddliness aside, I’m really pleased with how Gavin turned out - isn’t he a cutie?!