Late in 2016 the IFFF group had a magic ball swap and then on the first of January 2017, Loren unveiled the perfect project designed to use a magic ball, the Inner Beast.

“So who is this Inner Beast? We all have one.

He is the little voice that tells us “no” “can’t” “don’t bother” “it won’t work” “you don’t deserve happiness” “give up”…well, you get the picture.

We need to tame him!“

Freeformers, you are free to follow the pattern or use it as a jumping off point for your own ideas. (A crochet pattern was specially designed by Sharon of Laughing Purple Goldfish Designs for all the crocheters).

So I went left field almost immediately and knitted my inner beast. I used Rabbitty by Cheese Zombie, a free pattern on Knitty magazine, as a jumping off point for the body head and feet.

I made my own magic ball as I went using my ziplock bag of useful yarn scraps. Fairly early on my inner beast told me he was male and a beige walrus. Beige because he was bland, boring, colourless, forgettable and good at fading into the woodwork. So the solid yarn I used with my colourful scraps is a blah beige-ish fawn tan brown. The walrus bit is perhaps not surprising. My children often joke my husbeast’s inner spirit animal is a walrus. My husband has a strange dichotomy in my crafting life: he is supportive and encouraging but sometimes doesn’t get it and is always the one urging me to clean up my wool when it escapes its predefined storage boundaries.

The basic body and feet flowed quickly. I left the knots tied in my yarn as features on the outside. After stuffing the basic body and feet, I lightly felted him in the washing machine and trimmed the yarn ends a little. Towards the end of the month I added some black button eyes and a shinny crystal heart button. And then he sat, uncompleted and neglected.

Oh I had the vision. I knew he was a walrus and need tusks, a walrus moustache and flippers. And he was insistently telling me he needed antlers.
(The crochet inner Beastie’s has a variety of horns). But the inner voices told me I wasn’t going to be able to pull my vision off (and I listened).

Fast forward to late June 2018. I joined in an instagram challenge #weekofwips and unearthed and reconsidered all the WIPs. And suddenly I could do it. I sat down on a Saturday afternoon, knitted some tusks, sketched and constructed some flippers, made a faux fur moustache. And suddenly his personality was there. His horns are twigs from our ash tree wired on with decorative copper wire and tipped with metallic rose gold nail polish. I think he has dual unicorn horns that may be magical.

So here I’ve captured that little negative voice.This is my inner beast the beige walrus… We all have one right? The little voice in our head that says we are not creative enough, we’re not as good as everyone else, we’re dull, bland, boring, beige. We shouldn’t bother. What we do is generic. (In academia we call this imposter syndrome). Strangely enough he has ended up remarkably cute and loveable like the rest of the inner beastie tribe. He is a little weird but then so am I!

Now I can remonstrate and argue with him. I am good enough!