“I started the crochet octopus’ as a goodbye gift for my closest friends because I wanted to leave something for them before I would leave; but then I had too much yarn and a lot of time. I decided to make a lot of them to give to my grizzlies because this school was amazing to me for this year so I wanted to say thank you to everyone. I made an account in Instagram and said that if you wanted one you could have it, and it got crazy. I made 115 at the end and a lot of people gave me offers even to ship them to Italy so it was way bigger than just goodbye gifts and I’m so grateful for that. I got the names of the octopus’ from just random things and most of it started as me and my half-sister talking about our childhood. She said I could do some cartoons or something, and some of them were Italian things like food that people could remember. I met a lot, a lot of people probably more than 100, it was insane. I want people to take care of them and send me pictures of them on their birthdays, that’s why I gave them birthdays!”