Sam the Turtle

I know I haven't updated in forever, but I haven't had much free time to crochet and the little I have done have been amygurumis I've been making up myself and have been making "practice" versions first so I could get the form down before making another one in which I'd worry about the coloration. Plus, I've started dating someone since my last post and he tends to take up a good chunk of my free time that would otherwise have been spent crocheting, haha.

That being said, my boyfriend had an awful, stressful day yesterday and I figured I would make him up something real quick to surprise him with and hopefully cheer him up a bit. We spent quite a chunk of time looking at crochet books before at the bookstore and he found a pattern for a cute little turtle and asked me if I would make him it. I told him I could make up one for him from my own pattern, so I figured I would do that yesterday for his cheer-up surprise! On to pictures! (clickable thumbnails)

As you can see, Sam doesn't quite stand so much as he leans using his shell as a sort of kickstand, but it's all good! I whipped him up in a couple of hours so he's small and simple, but oh so cute (in my opinion at least :) ).

Almost forgot that I've come up with (what I think is) a cool and cute idea. I'm not claiming it's original or anything, but I've decided to crochet little hearts and put them inside any amygurumis I make as a sort of secret surprise. I could totally have a tagline like, "my amygurumis have heart!" or something, plus if they ever get destroyed for some reason, it'd kinda be a small sort of happy twist to be able to see the heart inside! It may be totally lame, but it amuses me and that's all that really matters, right? ;)

In my last post I decided that, since I'm a zoology major, any post I make involving animals will be accompanied with some fun facts about the animal species so...

Did you know??
The upper part of a turtle's shell is called the carapace and the bottom part is called the plastron. The scales that make up the part of the turtle shell we can see are called scutes and are made of keratin which is the same protein that forms a variety of structures in animals from mammalian hair to bird feathers and even the rhinoceros's horn! Turtles are the only animal in which the scapula (shoulder blades) are located inside of the ribs. The lungs of turtles are attached to the top of their shell which is why you should never hold a turtle upside down for extended periods of time (as all their other organs will compress their lungs!) Almost all turtles have temperature dependent sex determination (TSD) in which the temperature at which the eggs are incubated at determines the gender of the offspring.

It's kind of scary that I'm almost done with my last real semester of undergrad classes. I'll have many many more years of school while I'm working on getting a doctorate, but it'll be nice and weird to have a break for awhile before that goes on. Hopefully I'll have some time during then to work on crocheting lots of goodies and actually worry about setting up something so people can buy things if they want (I just have my horse, unicorn and orca hats sitting in my room since I won't wear them and haven't gone out of my way to find someone that would, haha).

Until next time!

-Erin