Sometimes you learn something because you seek out a lesson, and sometimes you learn something because a lesson is thrust upon you. In the case of my efforts to appliqué crochet frog eyes to the head of the amigurumi frogs I am working on, the lesson was thrust upon me.

I had thought that finishing the frogs I am working on would be a snap, but it turns out that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and I learned this in a most inefficient way.

As it happens, there isn’t just one wrong way to secure the eyes to a crochet frog–there are multiple ways–and while I might not know all of them, I spent this afternoon learning at least a few.

I started out the morning with high hopes. Weaving in ends and trimming them, and getting this photo of the frogs with all of their pieces:

The only thing left to do was split some yarn, embroider some features, attach the eyes, arms, and feet, and then finish up by stuffing and sewing the pieces together.

I had done all parts of this process except for the appliqué of the eyes on two previous amigurumi, so I was feeling confident and ready to go.

In my imagination the frogs were practically done. I was just ninety-minutes from having them all put tougher and ready to photograph.

Except for the part where I wasn’t.

Two hours and one nap later, this is what I had to show for myself:

I was pleased with the look I finally achieved, but the afternoon was gone, so I set the frogs aside for another day.

So how did my weekend get eaten like this?

I spent my Saturday working on a new Story Pin, and just like the frog eyes, I was hampered by the fact that I don’t know what I don’t know, but several errors later, I had created a new story pin based on a long ago blog post, “One skein at a time.“

In that blog post I detailed my process for sprucing up natural fiber yarns with Kool-Aid, and yesterday, I reduced the entire blog post into a single story pin, the cover of which looks like this:

And now that I have finally figured out a way to secure crochet frog eyes to a crochet frog’s head, I am ready to continue forward, one stitch at a time.