Knit your fears, quarantine knitting project

It is still drying. It has been drying for a day now.

I can’t explain why I made this model of the virus that brought the most of the planet to a standstill. Maybe it is an attempt to domesticate the wild and fearsome, sort of like like what we do with bears, having teddies in our houses. I thought about making at night, and when I woke up, went and checked, and yep, some people thought of it first. Made it anyway, ибодабы.

The pattern is simple and based on usual 6-ray symmetry knitted ball. Ball is knitted first, and then the tentacles are crocheted on. I will record here the process and numbers, so that my next attempt, if any, has better proportions.

Materials: some yarn, preferably woollen, because the model is felted in the end, stuffing, hollow fibre in my case, 4 straight sock needles, crochet hook.
Cast on 6 stitches, distribute between 3 needles, start knitting in round, adding evenly distributed 6 stitches every second row.

second row, 4 stitches on each needle

The increase rows
row1 all knit
row2 increase each stitch, now you have 4 stitches on each needle, 12 altogether
row3 all knit
row4 knit 1, knit 1 with increase till the end of the row 6 stitches each needle, 18 altogether
row5 all knit
row6 knit 2, knit 1 with increase till the end of the row 6 stitches each needle, 24 altogether
row7 all knit
row8 knit 3, knit 1 with increase, etc.

I knitted in this fashion till I had 12 on each needles, 36 altogether. Then knitted 2 rows without increases, one with increases (42 stitches altogether), two more without, then started with
The decrease rows, which are matching the increases:

row1 knit 5, knit two together, repeat till the end of the row
row2 all knit
row3 all knit
row4 knit 4, knit two together, repeat till the end of the row
row5 all knit
row6 knit 3, knit two together till the end of the row
etc, till you think it is time to stuff the ball. Hide the cast-on tail, if any, inside the toy.

I did the stuffing when I had six stitches on each needle:

Continue with decreases till you have 6 stitches altogether, two on each needle.

Close all stitches with a crochet hook. I had to cut and re-attach the yarn at this point.

Originally I wanted to somehow knit the model without having to cut the yarn, but couldn’t quite work out how to do it. I am ok with knitting but not so much with the crochet, you can probably do the knit-crochet transition much better than me.

The ball looks nice and neat, just a note to myself — the yarn must be thicker or needles smaller, because stuffing is showing.

Now, to do the tentacles. Chain six for the “leg” and then chain 3 to make a loop at the end. Return to the base of the chain by single-crocheting into the first 6 chain stitches.

It looks like Cthulhu with a spear, doesn’t it

This is how each tentacle looks like

To arrive to the next base, I single-crocheted into the stitches of the sphere. You can see the chains of sc on the first photo.

Originally, I figured I will make one tentacle on each pole, then 6 on the equator and 3 on each 45 degrees on longitude of the sphere, 14 altogether, making for a regular arrangement.

ball with 14 tentacles, chains of sc showing clearly.

But then I looked at it and realised there were too few tentacles. So, I started adding more more or less randomly ending up with 24 and breaking the regularity.

Also, I must note that the tentacles are too long. So next time fewer chain stitches and a regular pattern of more tentacles.

Finished, or simply stopped

The too-long tentacles were flexible and curling on themselves, so I washed the toy in very hot water with soap, rubbing it to make it felt a bit. It helped somewhat, but next time I need to calculate better.

That’s all for now. I might add of re-write if I have another go.

This model on Shutterstock — here