Octopus – Hopefully Creative

Octopus Award

Making a plush to celebrate a fellow skater

Our new tradition of making an award for the end of roller derby season took place again. I got to make an award for one of our newest skaters. My inspiration came very late, but when it did, it hit hard. My skater is someone who does all kinds of things; in her daily life she’s a hairdresser and a barber, is getting married soon, moving into her house etc. I wanted to reference all of that, and include her way of turning around on roller skates, which is more of a ‘disco turn’ than a step transition. So I decided to make an octopus plush with a disco ball for helmet.

Gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.

Back of gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.

I already had the Octopus plush pattern from Choly Knight, so I decided to reference that. Since the normal round arms from the pattern wouldn’t be conducive to give a ‘holding something’ impression, I wanted some longer arms. Reddit came to the rescue with this post by CynamonoweKrzeslo, where the sewist also helpfully shared the pattern for their tentacles. I enlarged the pattern a little until it was the size that I wanted and cut some out in a grey fleece and yellow bobble minky. The test-tentacle looked great! So I cut out eight more before heading to bed.

The next morning, I assembled all tentacles and needed to decide on the size of the head. In the end, the original Octopus plush pattern head shape, the eyes and laughing mouth were all enlarged 150% and printed out. This looked great, so I embroidered the eyes and mouth on and assembled the plush together. One of its arms is put into the disco fever pose with a little hook that you can hang a tiny loop on. The helmet is made from foam and an overlay of sequin fabric (for a disco ball effect) – I am still finding sequins in my house. The pattern was based on the normal head shape of the octopus plush with a little extra space. Some ribbon is used for the straps.

Gray and yellow octopus plush, with zoom on the ring and key cardboard icons around its tentacles.

Gray and yellow octopus plush with a focus on the donut and comb cardboard icons around its tentacles.

To reference all the items, which I wanted to keep removable, I chose word icons (to keep a similar style) and printed them on cardstock. I put two together with a loop of sticky tape to get them to stay around the tentacles. There are two roller skates, a ring, a donut, a cupcake, a comb, scissors and keys. I also wrote a rhyming poem to explain what I did. The helmet is also removable, so it can also be a ‘naked’ octopus.

I think he’s adorable and I hope she’ll enjoy having him around!

Brian the Big Brained Derpy Kraken

Making a little stuffed kraken that turned out more adorable than angry.

Way back when I purchased the dragon backpack pattern from CholyKnight, I also got a pattern for a Kraken plush and an Octopus/Animal plush. On Friday, I finally decided to make the adorable little Kraken.

I’d already purchased some dotted minky while getting the dragon fabrics precisely for the purpose of making something octopus-related. I thought the dots could perfectly represent suckers. So I got my grey fabric and some of the yellow dotted stuff and set out to make a Kraken with ‘angry eyes’. When I sent a picture of the finished plush to a friend of mine, he immediately suggested to name him ‘Brian’. Or even better, ‘Brian the bigbrained bracken’ [sic]. He also told me that mine is a little more derpy than the original, with which I totally agree. The pattern does not specify placement for the angry eyes so I sort of.. guessed based on where the regular eyes were positioned. Turns out that I put them a little too close together and now he looks derpy instead of angry.

He’s still magnificent and really soft. The eyes and spots are made of felt and stuck on with some vliesofix. Then I handstitched around them to secure in place permanently. The handstitching was done in a few hours while watching/listening to some old climbing competitions on YouTube, very relaxing. I may need to make another Kraken because I have some more dotted stuff hanging out in my fabric hoard.

Sir Octopus

The pattern designer from the previous knit gift had a sale on buying three patterns at the same time. So that is what I did, next to GOGEE, I also got a pattern for Dandy Sir Cephalopod and Bonbon. DSC is an octopus with a top hat and a monocle, I had to have it. Bonbon is a cute little rabbit, it will probably see my needles fairly soon.

On to DSC, I used the same yarn as for the GOGEE and got to work. First you knit the eight tentacles, which you finish with a three needle decrease. Once all eight tentacles are knit, you start the body, at some point, the tentacles are three needle decreased onto the existing body. This is a really easy join that only leaves you with eight tails to weave in (YAY!). The remainder of the body is then knit up, eyes are added a moustache is sewn on and then the head is closed up. Before finishing, a length of yarn is glued around one eye for the monocle. The pattern is wonderful and easy to follow. I really enjoyed knitting him.

The most difficult part came with the moustache. I didn’t have a moustache button available. It was Sunday, he had to be completed by Monday and all shops in the vicinity were closed. I had no choice but to bust out my trusted fimo clay. The (metaphorical) cobwebs were wiped from the pasta machine and it was put to work. I drew a moustache on some paper and traced it on my flattened fimo clay. Holes were punched and the clay was baked. I also decided that none of the safety eyes I had in the stash were large enough (see above, he just looks silly with tiny eyes). So with the remaining moustache clay, I made some half domes that I squashed onto smaller safety eyes. These cover-eyes were also baked and then glued to the smaller eyes. I learned again that I cannot be trusted with superglue since I got some on my finger.. again.

Once the eyes and moustache were added, I closed him up and knit the top hat. Since the octopus itself was quite .. busy in his colour scheme, he needed a neutral hat. So I got out some grey and got to work with that. When he was finished he couldn’t really stand on his tentacles, but if you perch him just right on a cup, he looks ever more wonderful. He’s currently living in the office on the desk of the birthday girl, so I still get to see him. She’s still deciding on his name, but it’ll definitely start with Sir.

Pentapus with Eigth Legs

Browsing Ravelry remains dangerous. I was looking for a pattern for a black sheep and found several but then I was blown over by a little pattern for a ‘pentapus‘ by Twice Sheared Sheep (hence why it showed up in my Sheep search). A pentapus is apparently an octopus with five arms. It was so cute that I had to start it right after finding it. It also helped that the instructions claimed that he could be finished in an hour (I’m apparently a slow knitter, because it took me a little longer..).

I did make some changes. The yarn was held double throughout. To create the eight legs, I did not increase to 25 but to 24 stitches, (k1,make bobble, k1) repeat 8 times and decreased from 24 to 20 stitches, in the respective rows. Otherwise I followed all the instructions.
The eyes are made by making a knot in some really thick yarn, then knotting it together in the octopus.

I think he’s really cute.

Swimming Octopus

I bought some fabric that has an interesting feel and pattern last year. I didn’t get round to determining what I wanted to make from it, so it languished in the stash. It is covered in octopuses on a blue background and it feels almost waxy? The people who I bought it from told me it was for swimwear. I’m not sure whether that is true, but I decided to make some (swimming) shorts out of it.

The pattern again came from a Simplicity magazine, although I’m not sure which one. I french seamed the entire thing to prevent the raveling. Now, the placement of the octopuses is not ideal, with that mutated big on over my butt, but I’m not going to care about it, I think.

Here is it flat outside (top) and on the insides (bottom). The fabric is quite similar on inside and outside as you can see.

I haven’t worn it out yet, but I’m planning on doing it as soon as the next heatwave hits. Last week we had one, but I was too lazy (and too hot) to actually go outside to the beach. Who knows how it will hold up..

O.O. the Octopus I

Sometimes you (re)find something that you just cannot ignore anymore.

Eye Right Eye

This happened to me at the start of April. I had found the free Octo the Octopus pattern on Ravelry (posted on Knitty here) way before this time, but I was afraid that it would take too long and would be too many stitches for me to actually finish. Since the first discovery I made some dinosaurs, some dragons and some other large projects. Then, my office wanted to have a knitting project for themselves. They really liked the Allosaurus even though it looked quite angry and wanted something for their own office that could be a group project. I suggested this Octopus that I’d found ages before. Everyone can knit a leg and I can join them to a head at the end with Kitchener stitch.

Starting this project in the office gave me some real craving to make one for myself. I didn’t want to make it in the same colours as the office one, but they had picked all the fun colours: blue on top but the entire rainbow for the bottom of the – legs? arms? – tentacles. This meant that I had a choice to make!

Flat Spread

I decided to buy a grey and brown ball of yarn and make a striped octopus. I googled ‘striped octopus’ after I’d already knit 4 stripes and found that there is a striped octopus, but it has white too. So off to the shoppy I went again and got some white. The stripes at the top were very regular, so I sewed in a line of white stitches to break it up a little. Then I just went and did completely irregular stripes. All the tentacles follow the same stripe composition and the bottom of the tentacles and his belly are blue. I followed the pattern closely (including errata), however, I did not want to knit with fingering weight yarn. So I substituted with some thicker yarn not knit double and changing the knitting of the eyelids. Google pictures told me that there is an octopus with white eyelid edges, so I chose to do that to get an even edge.

It went a lot quicker than expected. I finished him in under three weeks with most of my free time knitting him. You can find my notes on Ravelry here, they are quite limited *cough*. The reason why this post is posted a little bit after he was finished was mostly because he didn’t really have a name yet. After extensive discussion, we have come up with something…

We are pleased to hereby introduce O.O. Octopus I, Otto Octopuff Octopus The First, to the world. He was finished on April 21, weighs 539 grams, and measures 88 centimeters from head to tentacle. He will rest throughout working hours.

To scale

Otto will live on a stool in my living room, actually the black one you see on the left of the picture above. In the picture I’m holding him for scale (note, I am 1.58 m tall), he is quite big! Right now, I do believe that O.O. and the Dragon tie for first spot of most awesome knitted animal..

Tag: Octopus