Some Twitter buddies were talking about octopus scarves and I really wanted to make one. This pattern from HELLOhappy looked really cute and pretty simple, so I gave it a shot. It was fun and very easy to make – but fair warning: the tentacles get OLD really FAST. I decided to only make 2 as called for in the pattern, and made all the others with different instructions.
I made two extra long curling tentacles and then folded them over to make a total of four tentacles. Then I also made two long tentacles with a simple double-crochet-post stitch (where you go around the post of the previous row, rather than through the normal “chain” stitch at the top). It gave an interesting 3-D texture to the tentacle, without driving me mad from boredom.
I didn’t want a lot of stuffing in the octopus’s head/body, but I did want a little dimension. It just so happened I’d made a “cowl” earlier in the month that was way too small and ended up more of a fat, wide headband. Which just didn’t work. So I recycled it into stuffing.
I made the whites of the eyes from some leftover “hairy” white baby yarn I bought to make my Evil Day Job boss’s baby a sweet little lamb hat.
Sewing things on/together is not my favorite thing, so I didn’t make as many suckers as I probably should have. Maybe someday when I’m bored I’ll make a few more and sew them on. But for now, it was all I could do to sew everything together and finish the eyes.
It’s definitely one of a kind. Some of the tentacles are too long and definitely uneven – but I’m not a matchy-match sort of person anyway. I like it and the finished product is fun. I still want to make a more elegant tentacle scarf, but haven’t found the right pattern yet.
