A hat for my library director, who is leaving us the end of April. Last year, he kind of mentioned that he’d love an octopus hat after seeing the dead fish hat I made for a coworker’s retirement gift. At that time I could not find a suitable pattern. And I thought he was nuts anyway. Just didn’t have the vision, obviously, because I just happened to find this one a couple of weeks ago, laughed my butt off and pounced on it pronto. Perfect timing! Finished it at Interweave YarnFest this weekend. A very fun knit!

Pattern was a little fiddly (for me) in the beginning because I could not figure out a provisional cast on and then go from there. Finally, THIS cast on was tried (invisible provisional), and it worked like a charm. Well, it did until it was time to pick up those provisional stitches. It was hard to figure out which stitch was which, and I didn’t do a very good job. Thought I’d better knit a round before the kitchener join, hoping to straighten the stitches out, but it didn’t quite work. However, this very cushy Berroco Flicker yarn was very forgiving and just kind of suctioned up my mistakes. I can still see them, but it’s not as obvious as it would be with different yarn (SO glad I didn’t use cotton as the pattern specified! I got my sheen from the stellina in the Flicker! Nice touch of sparkle!)

Other tips:

1. Choose a simple hat (I used Jared Flood’s Turn a Square).
2. BLOCK the hat after knitting it and before seaming the octopus to it. I blocked the hat onto a head form (you can buy a styro foam one at Michael’s or JoAnn’s or any other crafts store.
3. Pin the octopus onto the hat in the way you want it to go. I temporarily stuffed the body with kleenex just to get an idea of the shape and how much to stretch the purled sections in between the tentacles. I used t-pins.
4. Pin the tentacles in a curly, squishy, octopus-y manner.
5. Whip stitch the octopus down, using the yarn ends that you left (all the sections I left at least a 5 inch long tail). I left the front of the octopus (the part without the big bulbous “butt”) open in order to stuff it first). When stitching, I used the blue octopus yarn (Berocco) to better blend it into the hat. Also, in stitching the hat part, I made sure to insert the needle and yarn UNDER the octopus rather than along side it-- also to better hide it. And I dunno-- thought that might help with the stretch thing. I don’t know how much this hat will have to stretch to fit JP’s head. I’m hoping not a lot! I’m guessing that it would be best to measure your recipient’s head, and then padding the head foam to those dimensions so the hat is already stretched to where it’s supposed to be before stitching down the octopus. Unfortunately, this hat is a surprise gift, and I couldn’t think of a perfectly natural reason to just get up in the middle of a meeting with my library director, whip out my tape measure and measuring his head, all while casually discussing access and circulation stuff without him getting suspicious! Anyway, expecting some awkward stretching on the hat, but hoping for the best anyway!