Knitted Octopus (pattern from Hansi Singh)

This pattern comes from Hansi Singh's wonderful book: Amigurumi Knits: Patterns for 20 Cute Mini Knits, which I highly recommend.  I received a copy from my lovely boyfriend when I first started knitting and I've really been too intimidated to try anything until now.  I was wondering if I would have a "can't believe I waited so long to do this" moment, but as complicated as these are, I'm glad I did wait.

Lurking background tomato

This is my first knitted amigurumi item.  (I also did the tomato from the same book but it's not nearly as exciting.)  It's strange how in crochet, I would consider amigurumi accessible to the beginner, but in knitting... not a chance.  This is probably the most complicated knitted item I've made so far.  Keeping all the different types of increases and decreases straight was a challenge.

Eye bulge extraordinaire

I did have some trouble with leaving gaps from incorrectly done increases (thanks for nothing, M1R & L, you tricky bastards!) and from picking up stitches to join the shapes together.  I like the way the construction is done, though.  It really eases you into the design and use of short rows which was new to me.  I like that the jacket of the book can be used as bookmarks for the tutorial section.  I had to make some sticky note pointers to locate each stitch guide on the pages though because they're a bit thrown together to save space.

Octopus and tomato

Inside the legs are pipe cleaners to give him some gripping and posing power.  I was worried about running out of the purple yarn so I added those green head stripes.  It was a near thing.  I decided to add the eyes, which are done separately with crochet (6sc in a ring, 12 sc, 8 sc), stuffed and embroidered with black and white in a little square.  Apparently that's how octopuses like to do their eyes.  In a square.

All done, ready for world domination

I may add some sequin or beaded suckers on later when I'm not feeling quite so glad to be done with the whole thing.  I did this over a series of evenings between different things so it was a lot of picking up and putting back down again.  Feeling happy to have this completed and a new skill learned.  My little project on ravelry.