make a young kraken!

Posted on by trish

 

Hap­py birth­day to Mike! :D

The young krak­en was one of Mike’s birth­day presents this year. I thought I would share the pat­tern, spread the joy! :D

 

I used:

a bit of grey worsted weight yarn

3.5mm and 3 mm hooks

stuff­ing

beads for eyes

nee­dle and thread to sew on eyes

 

Note: Young krak­en is cro­cheted in con­tin­u­ous rounds, not join­ing in the begin­ning of rounds. You can place a mark­er in the begin­ning of the rounds. I just eye­ball it. I fig­ure young krak­en can’t tell that I’m not exact. And even if he can, he won’t mind, because he has big­ger things to think about. Anyway. The instruc­tions are list­ed in steps, not in rounds. It’s kind of free-formed, check­ing its shape and size as we go. The mea­sure­ments in the pat­tern are sug­ges­tions, cer­tain­ly make mod­i­fi­ca­tions as you see fit. If you need any clar­i­fi­ca­tion please feel free to send me a mes­sage :D

inc. (increase) = cro­chet 2 sc in 1 st

dec. (decrease) = cro­chet 1 sc over 2 st

 

1. Using 3.5 mm hook, 6 sc in mag­ic ring

2. 1 sc in each sc for 2 con­tin­u­ous rounds

3. inc. in every 3rd st until piece mea­sures approx. 0.75 inch

4. 1 sc in each sc in con­tin­u­ous rounds until piece mea­sures approx. 1.25 inches

5. inc. in every 5th st until piece mea­sures approx. 1.75 inches

6. 1 sc in each sc in con­tin­u­ous rounds until piece mea­sures approx. 2.25 inches

7. *dec., 1 sc*, repeat from * to * for 1 round

8.  dec. in each sc until there are 8 st left in the opening

9. sc in each sc 8 times

10. stuff, but don’t fas­ten off 

11. Now we make the ten­ta­cles. Con­tin­u­ing from step 9, ch 20, sc in 2nd st from hook, sc in each ch, sc in next st in the opening.

Repeat step 11 sev­en more times. I var­ied the length of the ten­ta­cles from 20–25 ch. 

After the last ten­ta­cle is made, sl st into the open­ing, fas­ten off, leav­ing a long tail for sewing.

Using tail, weave in stitch­es to close the open­ing. Pull so the stuff­ing won’t come out, but not too tight. Fas­ten off, weave in ends.

12. Now we make the fins. The first fin is cro­cheted ver­ti­cal­ly down the rounds (see pho­to below).

Using 3mm hook, attach yarn at the 2nd round from the top. ch 1, sc in each of the next 3 st, hdc in each of next 2 st, dc in next st, dc and hdc in next st, sl st in next st, fas­ten off.

Now, the oth­er fin. Attach yarn at the oppo­site side of the bot­tom of the first fin, and cro­chet­ing up the rounds, like so…

ch 1, hdc and dc in next st, dc in next st, hdc in each of the next 2 st, sc in each of the next 3 st, sl st in next st, fas­ten off. Weave in ends.

And we’re done the cro­chet­ing part :D

For the eyes I found 2 saucer-shaped ruby red faceted beads that I thought would be per­fect for a young but fierce krak­en. To make it extra spe­cial (because it’s Mike’s birth­day), I made two rings with wire to kind of set the eyes (jump rings would work per­fect­ly, I just did­n’t have the right size at the moment) I sewed both on with thread.

 

Young krak­en, lurk­ing in the deep sea…

 

I’m quite proud of it, I must say :D

 

He now sits regal­ly on Mike’s desk, star­ing at me as I type this…

 Cheers! :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

66 thoughts on “make a young kraken!”

  1. Well done! I love the lit­tle krak­en! I know he wants to be fierce, but he’s just SOOOOOOO cute that I want to pat his lit­tle head! I’d “boop” his nose if he had one .…

  7. Absolute­ly mar­velous! I will have to try this love­ly fel­low! Thanks for sharing!!

  9. I’m mak­ing this for my best friend who loves squid… I love it and I’m sure she will, but just curi­ous how you curled the tentacles?

  10. glad you like it! :D when you sc into each ch of the ten­ta­cles it will curl nat­u­ral­ly. hap­py crocheting!

  11. Can you please say how many rows because I don’t under­stand .75 and stuff like that. Please I would like so much to make one of them krakens.

    THANKS IF YOU WILL.

  12. thank you for vis­it­ing! i under­stand that not every­one cro­chet the way i do, and the pat­terns i write may not be easy to read for every­one. the way the krak­en was made does not involve count­ing rows, so i actu­al­ly don’t know that infor­ma­tion. but it sounds like you want some clar­i­fi­ca­tions around the measurements? 

    by 0.75 inch, i meant 3/4 inch, 1.25 inch­es = one and 1/4 inch­es, 1.5 = one and 1/2 inch­es, and so on.

    hope that helps. there are also a few oth­er free squid cro­chet pat­tern on Rav­el­ry, and they might be writ­ten in dif­fer­ent ways.

  13. This is absolute­ly per­fect! I’m mak­ing one for a friend, but I think bet­ter in rounds, so I’m trans­lat­ing the pat­tern as I go. Once I’ve fin­ished, I can post it and link back here if you like :)

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  16. THIS IS AWESOME!!!! I have so many friends with lit­tle ones on the way! This will be PERFECT Thank you so much :) I might have to try it in a few dif­fer­ent colours.
    THANK YOU AGAIN

  17. Just fin­ished mak­ing one of these as my sec­ond ever amigu­ru­mi project. I did­n’t have any grey that I liked for it, so I used some left­over pink yarn, since it still feels kind of ‘squidish’ to me.
    For a first try he came out pret­ty well, albeit there are sev­er­al issues I’ll have to address if I make anoth­er one. Mine is a lit­tle bit small­er than yours, so I think my mea­sure­ments were off; also, his head came out sort of wonky shaped. He still looks like a squid and is real­ly cute, I’m just not very prac­ticed when it comes to such small stitches.
    Nonethe­less, I love the pat­tern, it’s absolute­ly adorable. If I get real­ly good at these I’m think­ing of attach­ing a cou­ple to the tops of bean­ies, just for laughs. ^.^

  19. Hi, I absolute­ly love your (or Mike’s!) Krak­en — I’ve got­ten into mak­ing jel­ly fish recent­ly, and this fel­la will make a hap­py addi­tion to the fam­i­ly! Thanks for spread­ing the love :D Free cro­chet pat­terns (espe­cial­ly ones as good as this one) are always huge­ly appre­ci­at­ed! Thank you :)

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  26. Young krak­en will be return­ing to sea soon! I am prepar­ing a care pack­age for a mil­i­tary friend who is cur­rent­ly at sea and Young krak­en will be among the things I will be send­ing out! He will instill fear in Her Majesty’s Cana­di­an Ship Toron­to! Or else peo­ple will find him so darn cute…

  27. young krak­en and i are feel­ing so hon­oured that the pat­tern will be used for a care pack­age! all our best wish­es for you and your friend at sea!

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  29. I made myself a lit­tle krak­en and he is so cute! he has fiery orange and black eyes and sits next to me while I cro­chet. Thanks for shar­ing such a well writ­ten pat­tern and a real­ly unique lit­tle guy!

  30. I love this!!
    After spend­ing a night with a friend watch­ing a doco on giant squids, I set out search­ing for ideas to cro­chet one to give him. This was eas­i­ly the best pat­tern I found :)
    Thanks heaps!! Love your blog — am in the process of set­ting one up myself, will be a pic of my lit­tle dude made with this pat­tern and a cred­it to you :) Thank you again!! <3

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  35. Thank you so much for sharing!

    your tuto­r­i­al real­ly taught me to be more free and freestyle in cro­chet! it’ awesome!
    i actu­al­ly googled how to do ten­ta­cles cause at first it turned out straight rib­bons- ‑and all i had to do is let go! not try to per­fect straight stitch­es and hold on to the begin­ning of the row.

    so thank you so much, your tuto­r­i­al gave me MORE then a super cool kraken:)

  36. I made two of these for my grown son who loves krack­ens. He liked them, of course. Now the hub­by needs one. :) Thank you so much for your kind­ness of shar­ing this pattern.

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  47. your krak­ens are fab­u­lous! thank you for try­ing out my pat­tern, and giv­ing free form cro­chet a try as well! :)

  48. This is super awe­some! The only sug­ges­tion I have is that you might want to include row/round num­bers in case peo­ple want to make it in a dif­fer­ent size or gauge. Oth­er than that this is super rad, great work!

  50. Thank you for this cute pat­tern, and thank you to Gem­ma for trans­lat­ing it into rounds. That trans­la­tion let me make a tee­ny lit­tle krak­en using sock yarn. :D

  52. Omg! This is the best ever!!! I’ve made two now to add to my lit­tle menagerie, and am in the process of mak­ing up some for my nephews. 

    Thanks for shar­ing this great lit­tle guy!!

  53. Thanks so much for your sweet mes­sage Christi­na! I’m glad you’re enjoy­ing mak­ing the young kraken!

  54. Hey im new to cro­chet! I real­ly wan­na make this guy but im not sure what step 7 is say­ing, I under­stand it’s decreas­ing but im not sure about the ‘*’ and how many to decrease.

  55. I absolute­ly love this pat­tern, and I love the way you wrote it. I do my own in steps rather than rounds, too. Some­times if I have a repeat­ing round of 25 stitch­es, I’ll say “then sc 100 around” to make 4 rows… I just want­ed to tell you I like your style!!!

  56. thanks so much Adri­enne! glad you like the pat­tern, and your way of count­ing sounds awe­some! :D hap­py crocheting!

  57. so sor­ry about the delay in reply Brooke! I’ve been out of the coun­try and did­n’t have access to my blog account until I came back a few days ago and some­how missed your mes­sage! thank you so much for giv­ing the pat­tern a try. the * means repeat­ing the stitch­es between the *‘s until the end of the round. for step 7, it means work­ing a decrease stitch then 1 sc, dec., 1 sc, dec., 1 sc… repeat­ed­ly until you reach the end of the round. hope that helps! hap­py crocheting!

  58. Is there any way to put “fuzzy sticks” (aka pipe clean­ers) in the ten­ta­cles to make them manipulable?

  59. hi Kaylee! thank you for vis­it­ing! using pipe clean­ers for the ten­ta­cles is a great idea, i haven’t tried! i’d imag­ine you’d need to cro­chet around the pipe clean­ers. would love to hear how it goes if you do give it a try. hap­py crocheting!

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  64. Ot is awsome i am mak­ing it for my mom for hal­loween she is going to love it

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