Hilarious Crochet Fail – Mermaid Ears

Whenever you attempt something new, failure is always lurking. That’s life. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. After a few years of hiatus, we once again have passes to Disneyland and I wanted to make Mickey ears, all kinds of Mickey ears. I see so many cool ones being worn all over the parks and I think, I can make those in crochet! So far, I have made exactly one set and it was cute but not that impressive.

I decided my next attempt would be ears that would reflect my love of mermaids. I looked at pictures for inspiration and saw a few that I could translate into crochet, easy.

Maybe not so easy, but definitely doable.

But I wanted to try something different first. Wouldn’t a mermaid tail on the ears look super cool? I found one somewhere but haven’t been able to find it again. I also wanted to make the ears stiff so they wouldn’t flop on the headband so I used three strands of yarn. I pictured it in my head and I thought it could work. I thought starting with purple and ending with green would look very mermaidy.I got started and quickly realized the ears might actually be too stiff but I kept going. I started mixing the colors and wasn’t sure I liked that either, but I kept going. The ears looked bigger than they should have been, but…I kept going. Next, came the mermaid tails (I had decided to put them on both ears with much internal debate) and now I was really doubting myself, but I kept going. (Do you notice a pattern here?)

I then needed to attach them to the headband and concluded that red yarn (representing Ariel’s red hair) would be great as a wrap-around. When I was done, I was pretty pleased. I sewed the ears on and…hmm, not sure I was getting the look I was going for. I put them on. Yikes!

They looked huge on my head and they looked more ‘Maleficent’ than ‘Ariel’. And it wasn’t even a good Maleficent so I couldn’t claim that’s what I was going for. My son came in my room to ask me for something and I asked him what he thought they were. “An elf thing? Some kind of Christmas thing?” Ok, fail. Obviously red, green and purple screamed Christmas and not mermaid. I told him what it was supposed to be and was he all, oh, ok, if you say so. I set the ears aside to think about what I was going to do with them.

A few days later, my hubby was in the room and I put them on and asked him what he thought they were. “Shrimp? But why make a headband with shrimp on it?” Faaaiiiillll! He, in turn, asked me what it was supposed to be. So I told him. And that’s when he fell on the floor laughing hysterically. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if I should be utterly offended or amused but his hysterical laughter so was contagious, I couldn’t help myself and I started laughing too. I laughed so hard, my sides started hurting. I was better off than him though, since he was on the floor gasping.

In gasps, he would say stuff like, “Thank you…for…that!” and ” I…needed a…good laugh!” He kept repeating, “They’re Mickey ears!”

After he came to, he said the workmanship was not in question but that there might be an issue with the design. He started suggesting maybe simple shells. Duh! The simple stuff was my backup plan. I was going for grandiose and spectacular. That set him off again. No doubt our kids thought we were crazy.

My daughter was downstairs and I explained why we were laughing. I showed her my ‘ears’ and asked her the same question. She said they looked like ears of some sort. Yes! Finally someone recognized what they were. But the tails stumped her and she asked why they were sticking up. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time. That’s why!

But since this creation didn’t work out, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. At least we got a good laugh out of it so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. 🙂 Hey, maybe I can turn them into something else and then I could claim they were supposed to look that way!

Maybe Pete’s Dragon?

Maybe snake eyes? Like from the snake from Jungle book?

Can’t win them all.