Octopussy

A few years ago I saw an image of Erin Weckerle's crocheted chandelier in a magazine and ever since I have wanted a version for the shop. We had the perfect chandelier for cozying in the front room and when we decided to move I knew that we would have to take that down which would be the perfect chance to cozy it. Fast forward to last year when I was doing a Google search for an octopus image an in the suggested search drop down the term "octopus chandelier" appear. I immediately abandoned my search in favor of looking though pages of images of octopus chandeliers (seriously go look, they are amazing.) I decided that the new shop was going to need an octopus chandelier and not only an octopus chandelier, but a knitted octopus chandelier. Since the chandelier in the shop only had six arms I started watching the Habitat ReStore (oh ReStore, how I love thee) for an eight armed chandelier and after about 6 weeks of watching I found one with the right shape at a good price so I snatched it up.

Original shape of chandelier after priming and painting.

After that I did lots of sketching and swatching to come up with my design. Originally the octopus was supposed to hang upside down, but when I started working on the suckers I decided he should go right side up which required me to remove the bottom part of the chandelier and several other bits and pieces.

Finished octopus, hanging out at the shop.

Now for the specs- I used five skeins of Cascade 220, 3 teal and 2 purple, 1 skein of 220 sport in red, about 200 o-rings in various sizes to shape the suckers, the eyes are needle felted and he is stuffed with roving (polyfil felt like a bad idea in conjunction with electrical wiring.) If you want to see him in person, he is hanging in the front room of the shop.

Octopus lit up at night.