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Last year, I set out to design a squishy amigurumi panda bear, and I succeeded. His name is Po the Panda, and he is one cuddly crocheted creation.
Po the Panda is the third crochet pattern that I’ve ever designed. I should be super proud of myself, right?
But no…
Once I finished crocheting this squishy boy, I posted a photo on Instagram which included a call-out for pattern testers.
In response, my DMs got silence.
And in that silence, I seriously started to doubt myself and more specifically, my crochet design.
The truth is that deep down I wasn’t fully 100% happy with this amigurumi design. I am a perfectionist after all, and the design was different to my usual types of amigurumi makes.
The idea came about in the first place because my friend’s young daughter loves pandas, and I wanted to make something for her. I wanted to create a simple, but large and cuddly amigurumi that she would love. I wasn’t designing for me, I was creating this crocheted panda for an adorable little girl.
The truth is, I really struggled with this project, but I cracked on anyway. I committed to my make. I didn’t crochet panda parts multiple times until they turned out perfect. I just wanted an end result, and once I had one, I committed myself to it by making it public and posting a pattern tester call.
The eerie silence of my DMs is what worried me.
A few days later, one amazing crocheter, Carla from Crochet for Squish, did get in touch with me and offered to test Po. I was ecstatic! Did my fear of failure evaporate in this one conversation? Sadly not, but it did give me confidence that there would be crocheters out there who were looking for a pattern just like this.
Carla happened to also have a young daughter who loves Pandas. Coincidence? Who knows! But it did make me realise that the design I created wasn’t for me, it was for a young girl who loved Pandas. Well, now two young girls who love Pandas. That realisation alone brought me so much joy!
In retrospect, the pattern tester call went out just before Christmas, and honestly that was very bad timing for a tester call. Lesson learned! But it still made me feel uneasy.
The reason I’m writing this post is to reinforce that as crocheters, we all doubt ourselves, our abilities, and our makes at times. But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, we just need to keep moving to find it.
Don’t ever stop creating. Keep crocheting, keep making mistakes, keep experimenting with your yarn. You’re a crocheter, that’s what you’re meant to do! You’ll feel better for it. And if you need that extra little bit of motivation, I just finished the audio book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I would highly recommend! As Elizabeth says in her book, “the perfect is the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.” Done is always better than perfect!
This post was very different from a lot of my previous blog posts, but I’d love to know if you enjoyed it. You can get in touch with me here, or leave a comment below – either way, I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time, happy crocheting,
Cilla x
