When Ambitious Projects Turn Into Marathon Endeavors

Oh, Oswald, poor, poor Oswald, will you ever be finished? Meet Oswald, my 50-foot octopus. Okay, so he's not quite 50 feet, but he is big, and he's still unfinished. I will update this post as and if I ever come back to him.

Oswald started as a fun idea and became a very big learning curve. I was at the stage of wanting a challenge when my amigurumi site

It was full of these octopuses that were so cute. So off I went, tippity-tapping on Etsy, and I found this amazing pattern of a nice, large octopus. Great!! Off I pop to Hobby Craft where I find this nice soft fuzzy yarn, Flutterby. I'd never worked with this yarn before, so I was excited. Hopefully, this would be like a plush teddy. Known as a knitter, I learnt the band tell you all the information you need, the needle size and tensions. Lucky for me, it does the same with hooks. So I get home, I whip out my size 4 hook and start my magic circle .... and SNAP. Yeah, the yarn broke. So again I start my magic circle annnnnd SNAP, again the yarn broke. This happened every time I did my magic ring. So tipity-tapity again to my amigurimi group complaining that ima a failure. Turns out fluffy yarn, especially the plush type, is famous for snapping when making magic circles. There is a new way, a CH2 method or Chain 2 method. Where you chain 2 stitches, then complete the 6sc you need in the 1st chain. So many YouTube videos later, I start with this ch2 method, only to stop and realise this pattern is HDC...What the hell is HDC!!

Turns out HDC is Half Double Crochet, this is where you line up the yarn on the hook like a Double Crochet, except you yarn over and pull through all loops rather than doing 2 yarn overs and 2 pull throughs. These stitches are slightly higher than a single crochet but not as tall as a double crochet. So now I've unlocked a new skill, I can carry on. And I'm off, I'm going around, and around, and around... to the point where I'm looking at this piece and I'm like, how big is this meant to be?

So naturally I start looking at the measurement for this toy and I realise that it was already a large teddy except they wanted a 3mm hook and I was doing it in a 4mm hook with a thicker yarn... that 1mm difference was a big difference on a pattern like this. After a decade, I did finish the head, but the problem was that the safety eyes I had were just too small for this project. I was unsure how big I even needed the eyes to special purchase some just for this project, so back to Google I went. Several YouTube videos later, I found out you could crochet eyes, so I played around with several yarns I had with me till I managed to get a nice size, along with the eyelids, I think he looked like a cute sleeping octopus.

Now it was at this point that I noticed the line going all the way around my work...

Future me: When you work an HDC, you end up with the V shape crochet lines on the side and the top of your project. I had only gone through the top two. This has BLO (Back Loop Only), all of my work leaving the front loops on show. I should have gone into all three lines to complete this stitch.

Current me: no idea what's wrong, so once again I go crying to my group "what have I done!!!" My lovely group told me exactly what future me now knows, that I have BLO my work. Now I sat there for two weeks, staring at him because I was 80% done, I didn't want to start again, but the perfectionist side of my brain is telling me to frog it and start again. So while I sat and pouted, I decided to do some arms. The underside of the tentacles where made with popcorn stitches done in certain ways to create sucker like bottoms. Having mastered popcorn stitch, I figured what could go wrong. A lot -.-. First of all,

I kept losing track of where I was, then I kept loosing cunt of what loop I was on. Then there was a mismatch in sizes. But I did finally finish one whole arm.

During this process, I decided I couldn't bear it, so I frogged the whole head and redid it. Now you can compare the two sides. I'm so glad I spent the time to go back and do it correctly. The biggest reason is that after doing the underside of the tentacles correctly, if I had created the blue tentacles wrong, then the sizes wouldn't match. By redoing it, it looked better, and the sizes lined up correctly.

Now I was ready to start the first top tentacle. To do this, I had to do a standing start. This is where I do a slip loop (like you're doing a chain), this becomes your first loop, you then carry on the stitch as a normal stitch. You then make a certain number of stitches before turning and working the next row. You keep doing this, then towards the bottom, you decrease each row to finish off the tentacle. Sew on the white part I did earlier, and boom, my 1st tentacle was done.

And this is where I stopped. I had remade the body, made one tentacle front and back and pressed pause to start another project. That was 3 years ago, and I still haven't picked him back up. But I do still have him and the yarn, and I vow to finish him one day.

Pattern: I bought this from Etsy. Now, the pattern alone is no longer available, but the seller sells a box set to make your own octopus. I believe it comes with all the yarn, etc. Her name is BistitchualYarnie