And As If That Weren't Enough...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, if you had talked to me any time between last September and last Christmas, you probably heard about the octopi. That is, if you aren't my mom. At one point in November or December, a few of us went to lunch with a vendor for my day job, and I opened my big mouth about the gang of stunt octopi I was knitting for Christmas. The vendor jumped on it, wondering all about them, how big they are, and how much one would cost. I knew I was in trouble, but he wanted one for his girlfriend's birthday, which wasn't until the end of January, so at least I had some additional time.

This one presented an additional challenge, though... he specified not only the colors, but also that he wanted the head/mantle part to look like a yin yang.

I was somehow strangely excited to get started. The pattern calls for the head/mantle part to be knit in the round, so I looked up techniques for knitting intarsia (blocks of color) in the round. I even tried a couple of the techniques, but I couldn't get any of them to work on that small of a scale in a quick enough amount of time to satisfy my "hafta-be-perfect-the-first-time" mentality. So I ripped them all and knitted that part back and forth, adding an extra stitch on the ends to be able to seam him up. Once he was seamed, you couldn't even tell he'd been knit back and forth. (Thank you, drunken monkey, for learning how to seam for reals.)

He also wanted the bottom of the tentacles to be a mixture of colors, and my stash generously supplied some matching Cascade Quatro to fit the bill.

I had fun making a different colored octopus with a challenging design feature. The vendor wasn't nearly as excited or impressed as I'd hoped he'd be, but that's why I won't typically knit for cash. I knit for fun. I hope his girlfriend is taking good care of her octopus. He's a cutie.

I have two more octopi in progress in my projects bin. I have dreams of an entire fingering-weight-octopus army. But that's a lot of tentacles. And there are sweet babies in Washington that need some sweaters this year... :)