Flyingduster

Kevin had a visitor this morning!

This cute wee guy belongs to a lovely local, however their puppy had ripped a seam open and they were gutted their beloved spider was hurt! It was posted in the local Facebook community page, I got tagged, and voila! We have a repaired spider who got to hang out with Kevin for a wee bit before heading back off home with his besotted owner again. 🐙🕷️😍

Kevin had a wee photo shoot today, he is so cool!!! 🥰🥰🥰 🐙🐙🐙

Lots of fun to make, the fur yarn is tricky to work with, but it also hides a lot of fudging from being tricky and making mistakes!! 🤣

The texture of him with the fur is SO COOL, I just wanna snuggle him!!!

Pattern is “Apollo The Octopus” by Projectarian. Main yarn is Moda Vera “Flurry”.

Kevin is all finished! It’s late and rainy so you have to make do with a poorly-lit indoor photo right now, but I couldn’t resist making him pose for a photo *right now* regardless!!!

Pattern is Apollo the Octopus by Projectarian

The eyes were made last week. All four eyelids are made now too! They’re all (eyes and eyelids) only pinned in place here, as unfortunately I do have to go and earn a living still… but perhaps this rainy afternoon I will get him finished! 🤞🤞

Eyes have been crafted, but the eyes are not yet attached to anything, so there are shenanigans being had… 🤣

Ahhh, now what colour eyes does he need??? I’m showing the eyes of the other three I’ve done to show how the three shades are done.

Orange/yellow is the most contrasting, but does also have representation in the suckers a fair bit too.

Purple is the most similar to the blue and won’t stand out really. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. There is no purple anywhere on him otherwise.

Green isn’t as contrasting as the orange/yellow but still more so than the purple. There is green in the suckers too.

Being aware that his eyelids will also be fluffy so may obscure the eyes a little more than the others I’ve done before. 🤔

The head is done, he’s partially stuffed, and I am working on closing up the belly and finishing stuffing it all to shape.

But before I close him up, did you know that octopus have three hearts?? I also have three amazing kids who have part of my heart.

And so, I made three crocheted hearts to go inside him. They’ll be locked away to never be seen again, but I know they’re in there!

Also, the currently trending name, is Kevin. We shall see if it sticks or not though!

The home straight now, finish this belly and then do the eyelids and eyes and he’s done!

This here is a fluffy octopus with a head!! Well, a somewhat deflated head yet… but it has a head! Just have the belly to go (and stuffing the head as I do the belly) and then the eyes…. What colour do I do the eyes??! 🤔

I was away all week long at our favourite annual homeschooling camp. There is no real cellphone reception out there, so it’s taken me a day to catch up again once I was back in the world of the internet! Haha!

But while there, I finished all the te****les! All 8 are done! Another mum there nicely calculated all the suckers for me as I progressed through the legs each day, and now counting the other three giant octopodes that I’ve made; I have crocheted a grand total of 1,920 individual suckers. 😅🤯

On to the body/head, belly and eyes!!! I have a busy week of work this week (to make up for taking a week of for camp! Haha) so will see what progress I can make. 💜

Still haven’t decided on a name!

And finally, we are up to the most recent octopus!

I finished and gifted Pickles almost a year ago now, then attempted to craft a bit more. I sorta thought that maybe, finally, I needed my own giant octopus after all!? This time, it was to be a bit of an experiment; I was going to make a fluffy one! Surely that would be inspiring…. But alas, the mojo was fleeting; I was still stuck in a lot of ways. I started it, and stopped…. I did a little bit here and there but basically was still pushing to find any mojo again.

Fast forward though; I continued to heal a LOT. I began to find my own self, find my confidence, my voice and my boundaries. I ultimately gave The Nameless One (and his owner) an eviction notice in June 2025, so while life was a somewhat stressful as all of those logistics were sorted out, ultimately it has been amazing.

I am free! I now own my own home, my own business, my own car. I am a solo mum, but we do have shared care so while I *desperately* miss my kids each weekend they’re away from me, I *also* relish the days alone to myself to just be *me*. 🥰

And as my life has done a huge shift, I have been unbelievably HAPPY. My life is f**ken amazing. I love my home and my job and my incredible family. I’m healthier and fitter than I’ve EVER been. And finally, I feel like it’s time to ACTUALLY get back in to crafting again.

Hence my simple wee goal for 2026, is to get back to crafting. Any crafting. All crafting. And I can’t wait!

So first, I will continue with the fluffy octopus! I have made the fourth te****le this week, and I’m mostly finished a fifth as of today as well. I am away on camp with the kids this week (woop! cannot WAIT!) and I intend to churn through more te****les there. So watch this space next weekend, when I’m back in cellphone reception, for what updates there will be on it!

And I will need to name it too... any clever ideas?? 🤔 🐙

The fourth of the octopodes (“omg, there’s more!?” 🤣) is Pickles, and she has a wee bit of a story behind her.

I alluded to it with the story of Tiny; life went a bit different for us just a week or so after finishing her: my (then 8 year old) daughter was diagnosed with a significant heart condition that no one had known about before. Then in early 2023 she had a significant enough turn of events that sent us life-flighted to starship and her having heart surgery to put in a pacemaker. The trauma and healing from that, for us all, has impacted life for the years since, and it really shunted us all over a notch before we ever managed to get back in to a semblance of normality again. That is when I stopped crafting *anything*. Literally; I was a half hour or so away from finishing a project when we flew to starship, and I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up and finish it again for years. My mojo had left the building.

At the very end of 2024, I finally had a massive breakdown/burnout/went off the rails. Basically a lifetime of suppressing my own self, including all the trauma above, all came out with a vengeance. I’m glossing over it, but I have never been in such a bad place before, and I genuinely wasn’t certain I’d still be here.

So 2025 was the journey of healing from that explosion/awakening/life shift. I had help from an amazing lady and, spontaneously, I decided that I had to make her a giant octopus too. There was very little reason other than I was desperately scrambling to find something to do, something that might feel like normal, or the old me, or not me at all, I don’t know. But once the idea was there, it had to be done.

And so Pickles was born in 2025. She got to meet Polly and The Nameless One (I hadn’t yet evicted him!) and now Pickles lives where she can help many others, cos you never know when seeing a giant crocheted octopus, is exactly what you needed. 🥰 🐙