December 2008 - Are you a Lovecraft fan who knows a knitter who recently asked you if you'd like to receive a hand-knit holiday gift? If you are, print this out and place it where they can find it.

This scarf is based on the Yorick pattern from Knitty.com and mostly follows Red Wolf's Cthulhu adaptation of the Yorick. Basically, you are leaving out the nose from Yorick and adding on tentacles.

To start, cast on 20 stitches.

Row 1: knit all stitches
Row 2: purl all stitches
Row 3: K1, m1, K1, m1, knit to last 2 stitches, m1, K1, m1, K1. (24 stitches)
Row 4: purl all stitches
Row 5: K1, m1, knit to last stitch, m1, K1. (26 stitches)
Row 6: purl all stitches
Row 7: knit all stitches
Row 8: purl all stitches
Row 9: K1, m1, knit to last stitch, m1, K1. (28 stitches)
Row 10: purl all stitches

From there, follow the Knitty.com directions for the Yorick, starting on Row 21. The only other change will be the addition of the tentacles.

If you have an extra set of needles in the right size, it saves a lot of unwanted thinking to do both of the heads first, before moving on to the "knit in your sleep" endless stockinette stitch that makes up the length of the scarf.

For the tentacles: I did 8 icord tentacles for each head (based on the Toy Vault plush toys) and sewed/seamed them onto the heads from the cast-on edge. The longest tentacles are 4-stitch icords, while all the others are 3-stitch icords. They started out as 3-inch, 4-inch, 5-inch, and 6-inch lengths. If I had to do this again, I might try to pick up the stitches from the head and do the icords that way, instead of making them as separate pieces that needed to be attached. Most of my knitting is done while the boy is napping, and the tentacles took me two days of naps to attach.

The yarn used for this Cthulhu is roughly a skein and a half of Cascade 220, in color #2409. I used US size 8 (5mm) needles and didn't bother with a gauge swatch since the scarf was going to be felted.

a regular Yorick