Knitwittering: Blue Floyd, Nautiloid

My friend Claire found this great pattern by Beth Skwarecki while looking for trilobite designs. It's really good fun to try out a novel thing like this spiral knitting so I launched into paleo-knitting. A cornucopia of Cephalopod fun then began with Blue Floyd the Nautiloid and Yellow Floyd. Just *giggle* no pink or any kind of skin tone for the uncircumcised outer shell, and especially no livid purple or crimson faces....!

I like to knit loosely so started on 2.75 mm dpns; less wear and tear on finger joints in the long run I think. This made a nice tight fabric for a firm stuffing with no stuffing showing through. I chose 3.5mm needles for Noro Silk Garden chunky, and made another bigger species Big Lloyd. I'm not sure the rough texture is authentically nautiloid, but they make cute multicoloured toys and you never know with fossils what the things looked like. That got me thinking about all the Molluscs I knew and Cephalopods; slugs snails squid octopuses and all the coiled shells and fossil species. I knitted some trilobites (from another of Beth's patterns) for them to eat and so began the weird feeling of a diorama coming on... but that's another story.

Nautilus catching a crab

I used very little stuffing compared to the shell part or the head of Beth's Nautie and so the head was not round. 6 stitches were picked up onto each of 3 dpns from the fourth row of purl heads from the cast off edge of the shell rather than knitting a separate face. I think the yarn I used for the head is a wee bit thinner than that used for the shells and so the head began to look like a squid. Instead of sewing up the last six stitches I split them and worked the first two I-cord tentacles.

Blue Floyd and Yellow Floyd without eyes

I arranged the tentacles in a ring surrounding a fluffy beak made of cut ends from the beginning of the I-cord. While knitting the tentacles I picked three stitches onto a needle, knit one row, knit the first stitch of the next row then knit the next two stitches and the first stitch of the third row with both the yarn and the tail. This makes a basal bulb like the attachment of a swimming limb out of three fat stitches. It also secures the tail. The ends are each threaded onto a needle, pushed into the stuffing and then pulled out at the same central spot and snipped.

The eyes are a challenge, perhaps googly eyes?

squid eye

octopus eye

I could make some more unusual eyes as these are underwater hunters and there were many many species back in the day. Modern Nautiloids have a pin-hole camera type eye.

nautilus eye

ammonite maw

Maybe eyes on tentacles?

Instead of M1 in one round, then coil the shell in the next, I just picked up a stitch from under both legs of a shell stitch each time, doing my curl and increase at the same time. The four rounds then make an easy satisfying rhythm; knit stuff, knit knit, knit curl and out comes this beautiful Fibonacci shape A. Perhaps I could curl around a bit further for a more ammonite shape B, but the outside may need more stitches than the inside; that might make for lumpy coiling. Short rows would spoil the long spiral lines of the piece. A raised slip-stitch on the outside of the shell or a vertical cable motif could give an ammonite style central ridge pattern so long as I can keep the column dead centre by increasing in pairs either side of the midline.

A. Fibonacci Nautiloid B. Coil Ammonite.

Will this improve the whole effect or is that faint diagonal caused by the increase cute? I don't think I'll go as far as using Fair-Isle stranding to make those fabulous suture patterns, even the stripy colour changes given in the pattern were a bit fiddly for me in 3 stitch I-cord.