bad metaphor

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but one thing I have been doing a lot is knitting. It seems as though I knit all the time, during every bit of free time I get in fact, but I will still never manage to get everything done by the holidays. Despite having a head start of about six months! Do I just knit like a snail or what? (Surely snails, lacking arms and fingers, would be spectacularly slow at yarn crafts).

At any rate, a few birthdays have come and gone, and that provided an opportunity to fulfill a request I’d received from the lovely Faye, who had been quite taken with my Mr. Snootypus. She inquired about a pattern, and I’d responded with a half-garbled, nonsensical retelling of what I thought I had done. “How do you knit an octopus?” “Well, you get some yarn, and you knit until it looks like an octopus.” Since then, a few of my friends have had birthdays, so I’ve had an opportunity to try and retrace my steps.

One could suppose this would provide me the chance to meticulously and painstakingly record pattern notes, but, you know, I got distracted sometimes by shiny things and people. Given my ability to knit without paying attention, it can be difficult to remember what I’ve done just, oh, five seconds ago. Despite this, I have managed to cobble together something that I do think might produce a passable octopus, similar to the ones I’ve made. The stitch math might actually be correct! Please feel free to leave comments, I can sympathize with just how painful a vague pattern can be.

Anyhow, without further ado, here is the Octopus Pattern!

Requirements:
Any worsted weight yarn
Size 8 dpns (at least 4)
Tapestry needle
Polyfill fiber (or the stuffing of your choice)
Embroidery floss / contrasting color yarn for face

Code translation:
Sts = stitches
Kfb = knit into the front and back of each stitch! See Knitting Help under “Bar Increase.” Alternately, if you have trouble doing this, you could substitute this with the ‘M1′ increase.
K2tog = knit two together. Again, you can substitute some of these on the left side of the octopus body with the ‘SSK’ decrease, for a more cleanly knit octopus.
( )* = repeat whatever is inside the parentheses, however many number of times

Body:
CO 6 sts. (I used the double tail method of casting on, but you can probably use whichever. If you use another cast-on method, you’ll need to knit all stitches on the first row.) Place a stitch marker and begin:

1: Kfb all sts. (12 sts)
2: K all sts.
3: Kfb all sts. (24 sts)
4: K all sts.
5: Kfb all sts. (48 sts)
6: K all sts.

Knit until you’d like to begin the crown shaping for the octopus’ head. It’s up to you whether you’d prefer a short, squat, tomatoish octopus, or a tall, stately one!

Head shaping:

1: (K2tog, k6)* 6 times. (42 sts)
2: K all sts
3: (K2tog, K6)* 5 times, k2tog. (36 sts)
4: K all sts
5: (K2tog, K4)* 6 times. (30 sts)
6: K all sts
7: (K2tog, K3)* 6 times. (24 sts)
8: K all sts
9: (K2tog, K2)* 6 times. (18 sts)
10: K all sts
11: (K2tog, K1)* 6 times. (12 sts)
12: K all sts
13: K2tog all sts (6 sts).

Break yarn, leaving a long tail at least 5 inches or so. Draw tail end loosely through the remaining 6 stitches. Start stuffing the octopus. Once the octopus begins to fill out a little, use embroidery floss or alternate yarn to begin stitching the face. Once finished, stuff the octopus until it is full, draw the yarn end taught and weave in the ends.

Tentacles:
I made all eight tentacles using the i-cord technique (almost at the very bottom of that page), which is probably easiest. You can knit flat rectangles, stuff and seam them if you like.

Flip your little guy over and decide where you want the tentacles (it helps to plan ahead at this step, hehe). I made a tentacle by picking up two stitches at the desired tentacular site, and knitting an i-cord to about the length I wanted them, about four inches or so. I liked the look of the skinnier tentacles but you might want them wider. Additionally, I had toyed with the idea of crocheting little suckers on the underside of each tentacle, but 1) these gifts were made very quickly and 2) I was lazy. And, bonus no. 3, I’m lousy at crochet. But if you are not lazy and also not lousy at crochet, this might be a fun way to embellish your cephalopod!

With pals like these, wouldn’t you like to be under the sea?

Gifted to Nina. I totally forget what she named it, but for some reason I think it is named after a guy who killed a bunch of opossums?

Gifted to Krissy. His name is Otis and he makes a splendid tea companion.

Note that the pattern will probably produce an octopus that looks more like Krissy’s, given that I wrote it right after finishing hers; if you’d like one more berry-like in appearance (I think Nina’s sort of looks like a blueberry, though it could be the effect of the yarn color), email or post a comment and I’ll try and resurrect the notes for that one.

* Alright, so maybe it isn’t the best Beatles song out there, but it fits, okay?