Nimakim is still in progress, but I felt like I’d lost my crochet mojo and my ability to concentrate*, so I decided to make a quick little monster to take a break.

Allow me to present Stella. She’s based on the forest spirits in the Studio Ghibli film, “My Neighbour Totoro“, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Since I’m working with a quieter colour palette at the moment, I found a soft, silvery grey for her. She has glow in the dark stripes and eyes.

As you can see, my mojo is taking its time returning. I couldn’t figure out how to get her ears crocheted to her head all in one piece, and I messed up the joins on the rounds of her body. (I didn’t want  to do spiral crochet as I didn’t want bumps where her stripes joined, but that happened anyway, except on the top one where I finally got it right.)

Still, a thing doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful, useful or loved. There’s a Japanese word, wabi-sabi, which denotes the concept of appreciating the imperfect. There’s probably a lot more to it than bollocksing up your row turns and deciding to live with it, but maybe there’s a little wiggle room for small crochet critters.

Stella will be ready to leave Monster HQ soon. I hope she gets some big adventures.

– Zola

* I have M.E. and it has been kicking my bum for the last few weeks.