I'm pretty much a sucker for an awesome pattern.  I mean, I'm sure that is the case for most knitters.  I horde yarn for a polar bear sweater I will make some day, I buy and then later get rid of scads of pattern books.  (No, I don't really get rid of them, keeping them for inspiration is a totally valid rationalization.)  Upon seeing a truly amazing pattern, I will probably buy the yarn that day and start it that night.  I also love a new way to do something that I've done before.  

Enter this amazing octopus:

Don't you love the eyes!  You knit his head with slits and then push the eyes in afterwards, so for a while you have a blind zombie octopus in your house!  Also, as you can see, the eyes make a really great hand puppet.  This may be my low key Halloween costume, two of these babies sewn onto some kind of finger sleeve, I haven't decided.  

It turns out that I was the first person to finish this pattern on Ravelry and the designer Max Alexander has asked if he can post  one of my photos on his blog.  Max has got it down with the eyes.  To me, his pieces have a great cartoon quality, almost like they are drawn.  I really like this bee. 

Because I am, and love to be, a machine for cranking out yarn versions of friend's inside jokes, this guy has a few accessories, including a baked potato from Anna Hrachovec's Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi.

and a laptop. I'm very proud of the laptop. 

I designed it myself, and this weekend I'm going to write out the pattern, because there are no tiny laptop patterns floating around the internet that I could find and now, knowing that, well, this situation cannot persist.