Owl – Hopefully Creative

Familiars Brought to Life

When your memory keeps failing and you try to help it by crafting a literal reminder.

I play DnD 5th edition with a friend of mine over Discord every so often. My character is a Kenku, a bird-like creature that cannot fly but can perfectly recreate sounds it hears, think Lyre bird. Her name is Rustle Crowe [sound of a piece of paper rustling, sound of a crow] and she’s got a familiar: Kevin. Kevin is an owl most of the time and he’s dumb as a rock. Still very helpful but I regularly forget he exists. So when the DM said: “why don’t you get yourself a reminder?”. That was reason enough to start making a new plush.

I used Sew Desu Ne/Choly Knight’s free owl pattern to make this plush owl. When googling owl, I found a picture of an Eastern Screech Owl that I really loved, and he became the main inspiration. I looked through my stash and was limited in the colours and fabrics I had. So Kevin doesn’t look like an Eastern Screech Owl, but he’s still pretty cute. I made three deviations from the pattern. 1. His head tufts are supposed to have two spikes, but I made a continuous one. 2. His feet are a little smaller than the original because I couldn’t get them symmetrical so just resewed them entirely. 3. He’s got a tail feather that isn’t included in the original pattern and I drafted myself. As usual for the Choly Knight patterns, it came together easily and the instructions were marvelous. I have now also amassed quite a stash of this type of wellness fleece fabric, so I will need to make more plushies in the future!

The Day of Three Shirts (part 2)

After finishing the first shirt, I wanted to finally tackle some Owl fabric I’ve had in the hoard since.. a long time. It was a bit of grey knit, with four framed owls on it. This meant that some fabric would need to be wasted in order to get an owl centered on any garment. If I would turn the fabric around, the back would still show a little of the owls through, so I couldn’t really just use the wrong side either.

After some careful placement, I did manage to get the front cut out. At that point, I’d already decided that wanted to try and cut another shirt from the leftovers on the grey only. This meant that it took me at least an hour of putting down pattern pieces and picking them back up and putting them somewhere else to get what I wanted. In the end, I decided that I wanted to have another owl centered on the back of the first shirt so that was that. I hemmed the sleeves, neckline, and bottom (and the edges of the other shirt) before changing needles and sewing the shoulder seams and side seams. If the placement would have been easier, this would have been a very speedy project. On to the third part!

Owls, on a Hat!

Owls were promised and will be delivered!

After roaming Ravelry and several blogs for some time now, I’ve seen the Owls sweater by Kate Davies a number of times now. I’ve always wanted to knit something like it, but the combination of not really liking a neckline like that and not wanting to buy more appropriate yarn has stopped me. I’d been thinking about if for some time on and off. Then one day, my colleague who also reads blogs, said something about me being the only one who she could imagine knitting it. So I explained the neckline problem and set out to find a solution.

Said solution was found in the Owl Beanie (Eulen Beanie) pattern on Ravelry. It had the owls, in an amount that was manageable, only needed one ball of yarn, and I actually wear hats quite a lot. I had bought a ball of yarn not very long before in a grey ‘stonewashed’ look, or so it claimed. I figured it would look good in grey. I did (again) make a few changes to the pattern, namely adding a brim (from the Sam Hat), extending the ribbing and making a swirl on the top. I’ve kept notes in the Ravelry project here. The picture at the top is the closest colour match.

I also added a number of buttons, two for each owl that came from my stash and fit perfectly, in my opinion. And a blue one from the stash to the top, to cover and hide the hole left over from binding off. This picture shows of the button and the swirl.

I like the way it looks and the way it wears, I put elastic in the bottom to keep it on my head. I had maybe 2 meters of yarn left over at the end of the project so that was very efficient too. What I find the most magical about the hat is that people don’t generally notice the owls until I point them out. I guess it’s not something others look for in hats…

Apparently I’m into knitting lately, at least that’s what the last three posts show. It’s true, I’ve restarted an old Gaia sweater that I’d thrown in a corner, I’m knitting socks on my almost weekly Harry Potter watching sessions and I’m thinking about starting a project with some blueish yarn that similar to the red, green, yellow and white that I’ve used before. I’m also still working on those jeans (finishing pockets, seaming and belt loops left to do), so there is stuff happening! Happy crafting!

Pyjamas again (Part 1)

I like pyjamas. I like sleeping in them, I like walking about the house in them and I sometimes even venture outside in them (though rarely). I also find that I like sewing pyjamas because I can make them as large and long as I want, with pants that is the case anyway. So the last time I went to the fabric market, I also got 3 meters of owly flannely stuff. I have since finished both pants and the jacket, but the pants were done first so they will be blogged first.

Here we go!

I like my pyjama bottoms long and wide, I used the same pattern as for the previous iterations (here and here). I laid my pattern such that there would be two owls on the front of the pants and one on the back, while attempting to keep an owl intact that was printed further down and I wanted to keep whole. It took days for the cutting to occur. I wasn’t really feeling it, then the switch was flicked and it was all done and dusted within a couple of hours.

I serged all the seams, as I managed to figure out the correct tension! This was an achievement only accomplished after an hour of fiddling, I finally succeeded after replacing the needle… Why did I not think of that sooner.. After the needle change it was only 2 more tries to get something decent enough to serge the entire thing with. I serged the bottom and folded it over as hem. Inserted elastic in the casing before sewing the casing and Tada! Pants! With Owls!

Proof is here:

Again, not the most flattering of pants, but they are nice and warm and if everything else fails I can point at the owl! One thing I did change from the previous versions was adding a back pocket (just one). The second picture shows the outline of said pocket because it’s camouflaged (sort of). I wanted a pocket because I often wander around the house and not having pockets is not very nice, to say the least.

Here is a close up of the owls that are on my new pants. Aren’t they cute?!

The next installment of Pyjamas again will cover the jacket and total owliness of my new PJs.

Tag: Owl