Scrolling I saw reference to a Chaunacops fish, which is a deep ocean variety of sea toad that can be a lurid red. One of the commenters said it looked like their grandma crocheted it. Hm. Could I crochet one?

I’m in hat making mode, so rather than make a stuffed animal, I decorated a red beanie with fins, tail, and mouth.

I didn’t do a pattern, this just was a fun little experiment. I do like how well a single crochet ribbing does for making fins.

It amuses me greatly.

Another way to start a beanie is making a spiral. The good part of the spiral is that there is no seam where a row starts, so it works well with variegated yarn with a long stretches of color. The tricky part is you need to use stitch markers to mark the beginning of the round to get your increases correct, and you need to decrease stitch size at the brim before weaving in the end.

I’m not a fan of color pooling, which is when a variegated yarn lines up as you knit or crochet and you get patches of color. Random, strangely shaped patches. I was in the craft store with my youngest doing a store walk to get some exercise and fill time, and a skein of brightly colored yarn called my name. (Walking a craft store makes for an expensive trip, just for future information.) I started making a beanie and then the colors pooled. Yuck. This is probably one of the worst examples of color pooling. I didn’t realize that they put the cool shades and warm shades together and I ended up with garish almost paisleys rather than a blended rainbow.

Something this bold and in your face needs to be a beret rather than a beanie, so I kept going with the diameter. I made a stretchy band with ribbed single crochet, and there finally achieved a more pleasant to my eye color shift.

I didn’t rip out the work, because everyone is different and there might be someone attracted to the fire and ice flames of the hat, and have the personality to pull off the bold beret. Or at least keep their head warm.