Progress Update
With my jellyfish head complete, the only step left in this project has been creating the tentacles! And as I was hoping, they were by far the easiest part of the project to complete.
While constructing the head for my jellyfish, most of the technique needed to do so was new to me and therefore made it a lot harder for me to finish that part. However, the tentacles were even easier to construct than I anticipated, as the only technique you needed for doing so was a single crochet stitch which is one of the easiest crochet techniques to learn.
To begin, all I had to do was crochet each tentacle strand individually. I made half of them longer than the rest so that the tentacles would have varying lengths when complete, thereby adding some dimension to the jellyfish.
As you can see in the video above, I also left a long strand of yarn on the end of each tentacle so that these strands could later be used in attaching the tentacles to the head. Doing so is the last step in completing this project!
Community Feedback
While I’ve been preoccupied with working on this project, I also had a chance this week to talk to one of our classmates, Alex, about her crochet project that she’s been working on for this class. In conversing with each other, we had the opportunity to reflect on how getting back into crocheting has been for both of us so far, and discussed the differences between our approaches.
While I have been following a stringent pattern for mine, Alex has taken a more open approach to hers, making our project approaches quite different.
Seeing as my project has been primarily based on following a set crochet pattern and carefully sticking to it (which has resulted in a lot of stress), something Alex recommended to me was to try doing more freestyle crocheting after this project is done. She suggested this so that I could begin experimenting with crocheting in a less stressful manner, and begin to explore the different possibilities with creating something from my own vision.
I really appreciate this suggestion because I think it’s so easy for me to get overwhelmed while trying to keep up with someone else’s guidelines for completing a project, and I’m really bad at having the motivation to freestyle and just wing it. I always fear it’s just going to leave me frustrated and with no work to show for it, but maybe some freedom in my crocheting is just what I need.
