The Octopus

I don't know why I first made an octopus. I'm just glad I did.

All I know is that, when I decided to turn a bunch of yarn into a stuffed animal, I really didn't know what I was doing. See, I didn't learn from my grandmother, like so many others have. My mom tried to teach me when I was a kid, but my obsession with doing things quickly clashed with her obsession of doing things well. I think I made a potholder, but honestly, I don't remember. I may have actually given up halfway through. But despite not having an actual product to show for that first lesson, I did gain something. My first teacher, my Mom, taught me a valuable lesson: how the final crochet product should look, and how the yarn and hook should feel in my hands as I traveled up and down the rows. I could crochet the same way a one-year-old can walk. Not well by any standard except now I had made a crochet square, while the day before I'd never held a hook.

But still, the fiber seeds were planted in my brain.

Years later, I found myself wandering the house looking for a project. I'm not one that can sit still and enjoy it. When I hear the word "relax", the first image that comes to mind is laying on a deck chair, dozing in the sun whilst wearing gigantic sunglasses. And it stresses me out. If I'm at the beach, I'm building a sandcastle or weaving seaweed into different shapes.

My hands have to stay busy.

So, faced with a couple empty hours that night, I pursued my mom's old crochet pattern booklets, all lined up on a shelf and untouched for years. I remembered enough of my first crochet lesson to know I had done it before, so I could do it again. All I needed was a refresher.

So I pulled out booklet after booklet, finding patterns for table runners, hats, shawls, and every version of an afghan a person could possibly dream up. And every pattern looked uninteresting, ridiculously complicated, or like it would take days to finish. I wasn't looking for a long, drawn out project. All I wanted to do was fill a couple hours with something interesting before I had to go to bed.

Until I found a pattern for a teddy bear. Now, keep in mind that I've never read a crochet pattern in my life. But by looking at the picture, I figured if the end result was an adorable teddy bear that was small enough to fit in my hand, I'd have it done in less than an hour. I could make two!

I was wrong.

After gathering all the yarn I needed, finding the hooks, and tracking down the polyester stuffing, I was invested. So by the time I found a comfortable seat on the couch and actually looked at the pattern and realized I didn't understand a single word or abbreviation, I decided I had come too far to turn back now. I plunged right in and started looking up terms and how-to videos.

I don't remember how many videos I looked up, how many times I rewatched them, nor how many times I glared at the knots in my hands. All I know is that it took far longer to complete than I wanted it to. But I had decided to birth this teddy bear, so by golly, I was gonna.

And I did.

And it's terrifying.

But hey, I now had an actual, physical creation to show for my struggles and rapid learning. And once my hands remembered how to do the single crochets, I was confidant I could do it again.

But not a teddy bear. While I'm thankful for my second teacher showing me how to hold tension on the yarn, how (not) to embroider eyes, and how to sew the different pieces together, I'm all done with bears for a while.

So I made an elephant from the same book of patterns. And while the the elephant didn't teach me many new things, it solidified my confidence in my ability.

It turned out a little cuter as well.

I think.

To be honest, the embroidered eyes still freak me out and I've switched to using safety eyes until I learn to embroider better.

Anyway, at this point the frustration for the time it took to create outweighed the novelty of the creation. These sized stuffed animals took more than a day, which was too long, in my opinion. I wanted something smaller and inherently cuter.

So I found this free online pattern for tiny octopuses, and have never looked back.

But I had, oh, so much to learn.

Quick side note about how to pluralize the word "octopus". Both "octopuses" and "octopi" are correct pluralizations because they're derived from different root words. "Octopi", the most familiar pluralization, comes from the Latin language, while "octopuses" comes from English trying to pluralize "octopus" its own way. There's actually a third pluralization that comes from the Greek, which is "octopodes". If you're a language nerd like me, you can read all about it here.

Now back to crochet.

The first one I made by following the pattern exactly as written. Or, at least, how I understood it. It turns out that I had actually been crocheting backwards, in a sense, this entire time. And I only found out when crocheting with a friend of mine.

When working in rounds, it is common for the yarn creation to curl inside out. The crafter is supposed to uncurl the product and keep going. Not knowing this, I thought the yarn was telling me which side was which. This meant that all those easily-counted rows that single crochets naturally create were inside the octopus, instead of outside where I could count them. Whilst crocheting with a friend (who had learned from her grandmother), she commented that something about my project didn't look quite right compared to hers, and that I seemed to be making it so much harder for myself. And while the less-defined look was pretty, defined rows give so much more structure to the end result. Besides, if you lose track of where you are in the pattern, you can figure it out by counting the rows on your project.

But you have to see the rows to count them. Which, up until this point, I couldn't and I had resorted to guessing where I had left off. I will be forever grateful for my fourth teacher's off-handed comment that my creation looked inside out.

Now that I had gotten the rhythm for octopus creation, it only took me thirty minutes to go from a bunch of yarn and stuffing, to a completed octopus.

Much more my speed.

Then, with the basics firmly cemented in my brain, I started tweaking the pattern. I used larger eyes to increase the cute factor, added hats of flowers on top of some, and used fun colors every chance I had. I even played around with different yarn and hook sizes to make gigantic octopuses and teeny-tiny ones.

I also learned that I could made two different tentacle patterns by crocheting them on either the close side of the creation, or the far side. I've dubbed them "squiggle" and "flower petals". Squiggle is a more defined shape, while flower petals are more round, as seen below.

Halfway through, I even decided to turn one into a whale instead.

And thus, the octopus became my fifth teacher. This round of education focused less on precision and technique, and instead allowed me to explore the possibilities hidden within the rows.

And that, exploration and creativity, is my favorite education.