The Atlantic Northeast Xmas Tree Jellyfish Tutorial

This year I signed up for a great holiday ornament swap - Thanks again Nicole and Kathleen for organizing it! There's a flickr pool of all the awesome stuff people have made here. And to spread the holiday love even further afield, here's how you can make a tree-jellyfish of your very own! In honor of my late great Grandpa Ben - don't get me started yet - this pattern is named "Forkfull."

The yarn is Karabella Stardust - it looks like a jellyfish just sitting on the shelf, so if you can find it, you've got a head start. Stardust looks and feels like a tube made out of a tutu, and has all the endearing and not-so endearing qualities one might expect from knitting with tutu yarn. Sparkly! Sweaty! Anything on the plasticky side of the spectrum that says jellyfish to you will work fine. The yarn wrapper calls for size 11 needles, and I worked on 4 size 9 1/2 double-points. Here we go:

Cast on 10 stitches using the knitting-on method. Leave a fairly long tail.

Bind off all but one.

Repeat this nine more times so you have 10 little fringies.

Being careful not to twist, slip 4 of the stitches to a second dpn.

Join as for I-cord and K2tog around, so you've got 5 stitches left and the fringies stick out.

Work 6 more rounds of I-cord.

Turn and Knit 1 round.

Being careful not to twist, transfer to three double-pointed needles (2 sts on the first 2 needles, 1 on the last). Now comes the cap -

Round one: Knit into the front and back (kfb) of each stitch.
Round two: kfb, k1 around
Round three: kfb, k2 around
Round four: kfb, k3 around
Round five : kfb, k4 around
Round six: kfb, k5 around
Round seven: kfb, k6 around
Rounds eight and nine: k

Bind off using the k2tog tbl, sl repeat bind off. (Translation: knit two together through the back loops, slip the stitch from the right hand needle to the left. Repeat until only one stitch remains, and pull through.)

Sew in the yarn-ends, ending so that the ends come out of the top of each and double as the tree-hanging cord.

Voila!

Happy holidays, everyone!




p.s. Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!