First off:

My Lespedeza paper was accepted! My Lespedeza paper was accepted! My Lespedeza paper was accepted!

(well, OK, WITH REVISIONS but still: My Lespedeza paper was accepted!)

You will have to imagine me dancing in my office.

Second of all:

Another finished thing from my vacation time.

This is Oscar:



Oscar is not a grouch, but he is a crab. (Heh.).

This is the "Deadliest Crab" from the most recent Knitty. I used some Wool of the Andes I had on hand, and bought a skein of Encore in a cream color for the underside.

I left the mouth off mine because I kind of prefer the more "neutral" expression with just the eyes.

I will say that the pattern does require considerable concentration, at least on the upper body - there's a whole bunch of shortrowing to try to make the shape of the "face." (I may have messed it up a little, mine doesn't look quite like the picture). The legs are not hard but they are very tedious because you are doing six of them (plus the two legs-with-claws)

I do think this would make an amusing baby toy if you embroidered the eyes (even lock-washer eyes are not really that safe, especially on a knitted thing - they can pull out) and if you enclosed a pillbox with a couple pebbles in it in the crab's middle so it would rattle when shaken.
Or a squeaker in the crab. (Heck, that would even be amusing if you were an adult. I wish I had thought of that when I was making the crab up. Then again, I don't have ready access to squeakers).

Of course, the crab lends itself to all kinds of bad puns, like



"What's the matter, feeling a little crabby?"

(Except I'm NOT, today, what with that paper acceptance.)