Owlies

Back in August, when I was attending my cousins wedding, I met several of my other cousins' children for the first time. Most notable was when I was standing in the kitchen talking and one of my cousins' wives came in carrying their little girl. When they got close she leaned forward, as if wanting me to hold her. However, her aim was my shirt. I was wearing Threadless' Doctor-Hoo shirt. She pointed at the owls as if counting (I think she's two...maybe?). Her mother said that she simply loved owls. It was really adorable. So because it was amusing and cute, when I came across an Owl pattern to knit in Kate Boyette's KnitWit book, I knew there was something a little extra going to their house this Christmas. I knit the owl up and stitched on the face so things couldn't be pulled off and swallowed. I think it turned our pretty good if I do say so myself. :)

Owls are so interesting. We had a Great Horned Owl that lived in the woods in the backyard when I was growing up. I haven't heard him in ages though. :( Mum collected them for ages and I still think they are neat (we have dozens of them around). Now with Harry Potter's popularity and the use of owls in the series, was it any wonder they are still really neat. I also love the train, so when I saw this pattern pop up today on the Ravelry side bar adverts, I had to click. Titled the Hogwarts Express but is in fact a shawl with owls?! Awesome! Don't know that I really talked about it too much in the post-letter receiving Pottermore post, but I "bought" an owl. Just seemed more fun to the experience over a toad or cat. I don't think I ever really determined a name for him, but still like Priestly. :D

When I was rooting around the internet for Halloween things and came across the Gleeful Things crafting website, I discovered a little Etsy shop, Mini Tidbits, that makes great owl pillows. There are tons of them all over Etsy, but i really liked the look of that shops, especially that Halloween on featured on Gleeful Things in October.

Tentacles Ahoy!

I did not always have this fascination with the octopus. It is a recently re-discovered interest that has been cultivated by my re-invigoration with knitting. When I was first looking at patterns and geeky things I came across this little guy. It took me a while, but I found the pattern and vow to knit him one day!

I blame my random trip to the zoo, for the inital intrigue. I was attending a conference downtown when the lecture room was declared too full and any further participants would make it a fire hazard. So to not waste the trip, I walked over to the zoo...in February. It was early morning and I discovered that the zookeepers were feeding many of the animals. So wanting to go ahead and see as much as I could, especially when it was inside, I wandered over to the invertebrate house. Here I discovered an octopus named Rachel. I learned some amazing things, such as, they change colors and they can fit through any space as long as their beaks can. That is most fascinating.

Needless to say, this fascination expanded when I discovered steampunk. I can only deduce that the octopus is part of the genre due to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Jules Verne. However, even with the confusion, that doesn't make them any less awesome.

So as I mentioned before, I've been knitting up this pair of mittens. I finished them after getting a bit side tracked due to other projects, the holidays creeping up, and general busyness with classes starting up and work.

I love how the colors turned out. I wasn't sure if they were going to work, and they actually photograph better for the contrast, but I really love how they look. It's almost like the octopi are mid change and blending with the seaish color of the background. ;D The yarn feels amazing, and they are toasty warm.

This was the first pair of full mittens I've completed. I've started two pairs in the past, but frogged due to size and not liking the color combination. I'm so pleased with these. Even if I occasionally felt like this guy while knitting them.

Something else I started with this set and the recent knittings I've been working on. I was looking through projects for a fellow Raveler and saw they listed what they'd audiobooked or watched while knitting, so I've decided to document it myself. I don't really remember much for the first one mitten of this pair other than it was Thanksgiving and there was a brief MythBusters marathon while I was finishing it up. The second one was knit in the car with music and Neil Gaiman's Stardust on. I still have a good chunk of the book to listen through. Love it (even if I've read it three times)!

Finally, in honor of the octopus and its eight tentacle glory, I found some fun and amusing little odds and ends on Etsy.

From a mountain of chunky yarn, Bellissima accessories...

A while ago, when I was renewing my interest in knitting, I stumbled upon a fun knitting book. That book is Vampire Knits by Genevieve Miller. Most of the contained patterns have something to do with Twilight which I could care less about. But a few of them are awesome in spite of that book series.

However, the pattern I was knitting up before, is a direct inspiration from Twilight. I was gifted yarn for my birthday, tons of it in fact, in a really neat blue. So when I decided I wanted to knit up the Bellissima Mittens, I pulled out that yarn.

I really love the length of them. They are floppy and big going over the cuffs of my coat well. If I was to knit them again, I would use a solid color so that the cables were really visible. With this yarn they are a bit hidden and I really do like the large link cable that goes up the back of the mittens.

Since I had lots of yarn left, I went looking for a hat pattern. I figured there had to be one out there. And low and behold, I found one. It took me a few hours to knit Bella's Hat which was pulled together from various Ravelery patterns of the mittens from the movie.

Yes, I got a little foam head to put things on. Partly for modeling hats, since I am horrific at taking pictures of myself; partly for my blue Coraline wig.

But whatever the reason, I like being able to photograph my hats at any angle. This doesn't really show the big link cable to well, but it looks neat paired with the mittens.

I actually wore them together on an excursion where it was quite chilly. While wandering about, I decided I would need a scarf too. And since I have a good chunk of the yarn left I would like to make it cabled and long.

Perhaps I'll get to the scarf one day, but for now the mittens and hat will have to do.