Jellyfish pattern!

I did it again! I finished a crochet pattern when I didn’t think I’d have time. Just finished with the first two of my three exams this year, and I guess I didn’t really prioritize the second one. Heh. But the pattern is done, and I am now ready to focus on chemistry  

Anyway. About the pattern. This thing was actually so complicated that for the first time ever, I had to make a pattern chart. I just hope it’s understandable. If not, please contact me and I’ll try to explain with written instructions as best I can It’s mainly the color changes on the bell that cause problems, the construction itself is fairly straightforward. Because of the stripes I had to move the increases around so that the red lines wouldn’t get all crooked, and some of the increases are even made in two colors. For this reason I rate the pattern as intermediate, but it shouldn’t be a problem if you are comfortable with a lot of color changes  

The tentacles were a challenge for me, both because I had to make so many of them and because I had some trouble getting them right. This kind of jellyfish (the compass jellyfish, Chrysaora hysoscella) has four ruffled arms and twenty four really long tentacles. I decided to make only sixteen of them, as I felt it looked crowded enough and twenty four crocheted tentacles would be too much. You always have the option of using yarn strands if you don’t want to crochet all those tentacles  

I think I started working on this some time this summer, so it’s taken me quite some time to finish. In the beginning of November I visited Berlin for a week, and I brought this along because I can’t go anywhere without something to work on. Didn’t get much more done while I was there, but to my great joy I actually got to see these jellies up close and alive at the aquarium! It was really cool, I’m still excited about it  

See, aren’t they pretty? They might not look very much like the one I’ve made, because I modeled mine after a picture and a description in a book I have. Later, after I’d made most of the parts, I realized that they vary greatly in color, and the placement of the 24 tentacles is very different. The book (and Wikipedia) says that the tentacles are placed on groups of three around the edge of the jelly, but the pictures on Google shows that that’s not necessarily true. So I don’t know. I had to make a decision about the design, and this is what I ended up with. You feel free to experiment with the pattern