Pronounced like “gooey duck”, geoducks are quite unusual things. Although I’ve never tried eating one, apparently they are delicious. I do know their impressive size, being far too large to fit in their own shells, is comical. As well as their obvious suggestive similarity to something a little more NSFW.
My sons discovered them when watching a TV show and I thought it would be funny to actually make it look like a duck. Little did I know that it was actually a thing. I was even more surprised to find out that Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA has the mighty geoduck as its school mascot. Combine that with their motto of “let it all hang out”, and you have a recipe for hilarity.
According to Wikipedia, geoducks can have an average lifespan of 140 years, unless we eat them of course.
As with every other thing I make for our own family, I wrote down every single line of pattern as I went. I even made a couple more, not just to make sure there were no mistakes before passing it over to my testers, but because each one of us wanted our own geoduck.
It turned out to be a really easy pattern. I even added instructions in there to make it a longer version. The only disappointing part for some people might be that it does require sewing on the shell “wings”, which many people dislike sewing.
To make Geoffrey I used about 40g of #4 medium worsted weight acrylic yarn for the body (small version), 18g for the shell, and 2g of orange for the beak. I used a 3.0 mm hook like I typically do. It is optional to backstitch the shell with #20 cotton or embroidery floss but I highly recommend it as it adds a little extra something. I used 8mm safety eyes too.
The small version of Geoffrey measures 9” (23 cm) tall. The large version measures 10.5” (27 cm) tall. But don’t let that stop you. Geoffrey can be as comically long as you like!
If you’d like to try your hand at crocheting a geoduck of your very own, you can find the pattern over at Ravelry in my shop.
