Pattern by DollsBerries, tweaked a little.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Amigurumi
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I joined a group that sort of does that; octopus for a premie (it exists in the US and UK) donate small octopus like toys to premature baby units. It helps give the babies something to grab onto so they don’t pull on their critical tubes and wires. A study also found it reduced anxiety in the little ones.
I made about 100 (that were accepted) before the pandemic hit and we had to stop. It’s up and running again now but the charity (at least in the UK) is pretty problematic so I don’t make for them anymore. I couldn’t afford to since the cost of living crisis hit anyway tbh.
There’s a list of specific yarns and stuffing you must use, you must follow the patterns exactly, and there’s a pretty high fail rate. It wouldn’t describe it as particularly fun or creative - more frustrating and expensive! But if you just like crocheting and don’t have anyone left to offload your finished pieces onto, it’s a very rewarding hobby 😊
Just google OFAP. I believe they operate solely through Facebook though. I’ll attach some photos of my favourites!
I'll look into that, thank you! Hopefully the US program won't be as bad, and there must be others. But there's always someone champing at the bit to take advantage.
Those look super cute and, for how simple they are, I wonder why the fail rate is so high?
So for me I nearly always failed for having “gaps” in the octopus heads. But it could be anything - not being exactly the right width and height, not being stuffed firmly enough, tentacles being too long or too short, using too many hdc on the tentacles, using a yarn they had previously approved but then changed their minds…
I understand how careful we have to be as these are going to tiny extremely vulnerable babies, but some rules just seemed ridiculous. Here’s some of mine that failed inspection, all due to gaps. You can be completely honest, do you think these gaps could be a danger to any baby?
Judging premature infants to be a bit bigger than your entire hand, it's still a slightly hard sell and they're clearly erring hard on the side of caution. Which I can definitely see. They don't want even a ghost of a chance of a single fiber even possibly ever getting out, and how beyond horrifying would it be if it were a problem?
But some of those are quite literally about the size of a pinprick and I'm not convinced even their own baby fingers could fit in there. I see what you're saying and I'd probably be rejected just as often as you were, if not more, and feel just as annoyed. I crochet tight, but not THAT tight. Even more annoyed that I couldn't even complain, considering the destination. But like...a tentacle with one extra/missing hdc? That one is pedantry.
I really like your nails, btw. Love that wine red color, and the grey ones remind me of mica flakes
I can’t claim the nails, that’s the group coordinator. In the UK at least you join the local OFAP group. The group coordinator is responsible for holding irl meet ups, checking all the octopuses made by her group, washing, drying and packaging them, and dropping them off at local neonatal units who request them. She gets audited from time to time too.
My group leader was a really lovely woman, but I think she was definitely on the stricter side. I’d see people from other groups post theirs that had passed with gaps much more visible than mine. So that was frustrating - especially as they don’t give them back. “Rejected” ones were offered to grieving parents, but they weren’t a lot of takers, understandably. So there’s an awful lot of time, effort and money sitting in boxes somewhere going to waste.
I actually switched to making flat ones in the end like this:
I didn’t enjoy making those. I thought they were a bit ugly! And I still had about 5-10 of those rejected for pinprick gaps at first - even though there’s no stuffing!
You’re absolutely right about having to err on the side of caution, you just can’t take risks with these tiny ones. But after a while it becomes really disheartening, or at least it did to me. I’m glad I joined for the couple of years I did, but I definitely don’t have the money now to risk so many going to waste. The overall leaders in the UK were pretty unlikable - you’d get a lot of criticism and very little thanks. They’d berate us for not making enough each month and push us to buy yarn from them at a mark up. I believe the scheme started in the US, or Canada so hopefully it’s a bit better run there!