Luckily all knitters are not like me!

If they were, then designers like me would have a hard time selling patterns:  by the time I've done the knitting for my own patterns-- even with the help of test knitters-- I don't have much time or inclination to do other knitting.   I do feel a little guilty about this; there are wonderful patterns out there, often designed by friends or acquaintances that I would love to support, and I'm sure I could also learn a lot from knitting others' designs. 

Anyhoo, not only did I do exactly one piece of gift knitting this (past) Christmas, it was designed by someone else:  the creative and talented Hansi Singh!  I had never knitted a critter before, so when I saw pictures of her cephalopods, I decided it was time to give it a try.

(Above: the critter's underside.)  The recipient of this cuttlefish likes deep dark purple, and I thought a variegated or nearly solid yarn would give a nice mottled effect, so I decided to use Queensland Collection Rustic Wool, a superwash wool which comes in both a variegated dark purple, and a coordinating lighter shade composed of lighter purples along with gray and tan.  I was a little concerned to note that the pattern was 11 pages long!  But it turned out that every pattern row is written out, so I moved through most of the pages quickly. 

The photo above shows the underside of the cuttlefish early on in the pattern, as the limbs are being attached to the body. 

The slowest part turned out to be the fin, which is the ruffled border around the edge of the mantle:  an option is given for working the fin separately and then sewing it onto the mantle, but of course I thought it would be cooler to pick up the stitches from the mantle and knit it on, with no need for seaming later.  The fin has lots of stitches, first of all; and then it is worked on 2 circular needles or (in my case) 8 dp needles, which is awkward (if I did it again I would use the circs!); and finally it is worked in a round which is then separated into top and bottom layers, which are seamed using three-needle bindoff to finish-- very elegant, but I knew that keeping all of those stitches at the tips of two parallel needles while doing the bindoff would drive me nuts, so I transferred groups of 10-15 stitches at a time from each needle to another needle, alternating one stitch from each needle, so that I then just had to k2tog from a single needle while doing the bindoff. 

As instructed for critters not meant for small children, I inserted pipe cleaners into the arms and tentacles so they could be posed, which allowed some silly fun while taking photos of the finished fellow (see here for a photo of him menacing a mermaid!).  Also as instructed, I used smaller needles (US 4) than called for on the ball band (US 7) to create a tight fabric to keep the stuffing inside.  Even so, I was glad I used dark brown pipe cleaners, because I think white ones might have showed through slightly, and when I worked in the loose yarn tails (lots of 'em!), I used the ones at the ends of the arms and tentacles to close the arm and tentacle tips tightly, so the pipe cleaner ends wouldn't protrude. 

The only pattern mod I made was to shorten the mantle by about 7 rows, because I was afraid I would run out of yarn-- and as seen in the first photo, of the cuttlefish with the leftover yarn, I probably would have either run out, or had to use some of the contrasting color for the fin.

I did find a few pattern errors and oddities, which I will summarize when I have a little more time.  In spite of these I highly recommend this pattern, and who knows-- maybe someday I'll get around to making one for myself!

(Don't tell our new friend, but when I was a kid I used to love chewing on strips of dried cuttlefish-- fishy, salty, yum!)

Edited on 6/13/11 to add: I am not Hansi Singh!! I am not the designer of the Cuttlefish pattern, so please do not email me with questions about it or any of her other patterns. Sorry, but I do not know how to contact her, except on Ravelry.com, where her user name is hansigurumi.