My husband and I attended SOAR ( SpinOFF Autumn Retreat ) for the fourth time in a row; September-October 2011 at Radisson Hotel, in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA.
One of the attractions this year was ‘playing’ Spinner’s Poker, copying in the text from the event:
Come play with us! When you register, pick up five cards (one from each category: Fiber, Number of Plies, Color, Yarn Weight, and End Use), use at least four of the cards to design a yarn and create a completed object during the week of SOAR. Drop off completed objects at the registration desk before 1 p.m. on Saturday October 8, to be displayed and voted on during the Spin-In that night. You may trade cards with other participants during the week, but they must be within the same category. Each entry should be completed entirely onsite during SOAR and should be an individual effort. Awards will be given for excellence, creativity, and originality.

I picked up my cards on Sunday afternoon and was a bit at loss. I’ve never created a toy, let alone from from scratch, didn’t have any purple wool and the market wasn’t until Thursday but then so much time would have been lost!
The idea of the cards was to get people to interact and have fun, that worked very well, and I was most happy to give other people a hand with colours, and ‘rare breeds’, but purple?!?

Coming from afar I always bring wool with me, for spinning and testing out new spinning tools, for donating to the Silent Auction, and it so happens that I did have wool with me….not purple at all.
But a purple colour can be blended, and with my new Valkyrie combs ( bless Thorfinn for coming early to SOAR and deliver them in person! ) I went for it, blending red and blue with a frenzy. One evening’s worth of blending and combing and I was ready to spin on Monday, a fingering single on my Bosworth spindle ( the Walnut Midi ).
MOnday evening it was very clear that I needed to choose a project or swap my cards. I decided after some sketching to make a purple Octupus finger puppet for my Poker challenge, and keep all my cards as they were.
I spun on my spindle ( even finished my yarn but it needed to be dried with a hair dryer) and decided to knit the Octupus top down, ending with a cuff. Finger puppet, right?
Halway through, and you know I have this little overachiever sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear, right? I decided that I needed to make suckers, stuffed tentacles and a pink underside.
More combing of my wool but new colours, I was agonising that I would be able to blend pink and process enough for the undersides. And..then…stuffing tentacles. What the heck is possible to use?!? Wool, but it doesn’t give stability. Pipe cleaners but where would I find that? Napkins?!?
A spinner is seldom clueless, and my new Hansen Minispinner needed to be involved now. In my luggage I had some very thin stainless steel wire, so I corespun this early one morning when the jetlag wouldn’t allow me to sleep, wrapping combed pink fiber around it so that the steel wouldn’t show through. Spun like a fury, hoping to get enough. The Hansen performed beautifully, giving me my stainless stiff pink yarn, hereby eliminating the need for stuffing the tentacles. The lime for the suckers was combed from a few locks I had with me, again, was it enough?
And how to get the arms to twist and curl?
Another idea struck, how about making lopsided short row undersides with a short row adapted three needle bind off?!? Bad description
…but the tentacles twist, by themselves. Writing a pattern for that now cough …eougggh!
In the end, spinning, knitting and embroidering the suckers, all that was needed was..eyes. Disaster. My poor felted efforts were pitiful indeed.
But here the market helped me. We found the most glorious Octopus eyes at the Shipyard Glassworks, and I sewed them on, with an eye on the deadline.
And the final touch was, to stuff his head with the combing leftovers, giving a squishy nice head.

Saturday evening at SOAR, the little Octupus won two cathegories; Award for Excellence and People’s choice. Later that evening Jimbob christened him Octavian ( Octavianus in Swedish ).
And now he proudly resides in our living room, keeping an eye on it and us every day.
Oh and he is a finger puppet, but not in the usual way. You put your fingers in his tentacles, and wriggle, that’s how!

What a wonderful memory!

Thanks to hillevi3 ( Barbro) for the photos of me and my little companion.