Beautiful but deadly, the Portuguese Man of War roams the ocean with trailing venomous stinging tentacles that can reach 165 ft (50 m) in length. It is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore - a colony of specialized minute individual organisms called zooids. These zooids are attached to one another and integrated to the extent that they cannot survive independently and the whole colony functions as one organism with different types of tentacles. Lots of tentacles, but the tentacles are fun to knit! Despite the venom in the tentacles, the Man-of-War Fish is partially immune and can live among the tentacles, finding protection there.

This is a challenging pattern for an experienced knitter and uses many techniques, but with much patience and a willingness to try new techniques, an intermediate knitter could tackle this.

This pattern uses fingering weight yarn. The tentacles are easiest to knit with a plied yarn that does not split. You can hold silver thread together with the yarn to add sparkle to the pneumatophore and crest.
BC: Base and gonozooids color 40 yds
GC: Gastrozooid color 25 yds
DC: Dactylozooid color 107 yds
PC: Pneumatophore color (body) 100 yds
CC: Crest color 20 yds
Rib Color: 18 pieces 20” (50 cm) long for the vertical crest stripes.
Silver thread: 120 yds (optional)
FC: Fish color: 18 yds

You will need 3 circular needles of whatever size you need to get a firm gauge and a set of dpns. I used size US 4 (3.5 mm)