Birthday Crabs! Not that kind. The kind you WANT.

Which one of these would you rather snuggle with, and which one would you rather eat?

Picture A:

Picture B:

Obviously, the answer to question 1 is picture A, and the answer to question 2 is neither.

That’s because soft knitted crabs are adorable while the real thing has inspired more nightmares than the clown from IT.

In picture 1, hanging out on the left, we have an Alaskan King Crab (completely not to scale) named Sig Hansen. I made him for my husband’s birthday back in October. Why does a man in his 30s need a stuff crab? He doesn’t, but when I make him one he happily takes it and sets it on the back of the couch along with his stuffed octopus. The logic here is, you see, that he enjoys with Christmas morning delight every episode of Deadliest Catch, and Sig is his favorite captain. He’s made from some leftover Caron Simply Soft.

On the right, we have a Maryland Blue Crab which I made for the daughter of friends on the occasion of her first birthday. I did not deign to assign a name, figuring I’d let the baby do that on her own when she got around to it. But during the construction process I called her Mary Blue (inadvertently making her a girl in the process). Mary Blue is made from Lion Brand Thick & Quick and is about twice the size of Sig, but all the better for cuddling. I thought a Maryland baby just needed a Maryland crab toy.

The crabs enjoyed holding hands on our porch before Mary Blue moved along to her new home. She was well received as a gift, though the wrapping paper was slightly more popular.

Both of these are based on the Deadliest Crab pattern at Knitty, with only slight mods to Mary Blue to compensate for the chunky yarn and wanting a crab big enough for a baby to hug but light enough to carry and hold.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I love crab. I’d eat it all day and every day if you’d let me. I don’t even mind picking them myself, but I much prefer them in cake form and from a place called Koco’s Pub, which is hands down the best place for crab cakes in not just Maryland, but the multiverse. But no, they ain’t pretty.