the owls are not what they seem

Well I've finally got to the end of the baby gift knitting, for now! I couldn't resist this little pattern. So cute, and yet so much less effort than the adult version. It's Owlet, by Kate Davies. I knitted it in exactly the recommended yarn, Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran, in exactly the same colour as she used. This may have displayed something of a poverty of imagination on my part, but the mother of the child likes both mustardy yellow and owls, so when I stumbled across this pattern I knew it was spot on. The yarn isn't cheap but it is very lovely - it's really springy soft superwash merino, and I only needed three balls for the 6-9 month size. It was a super quick knit too. I've never done a bottom up raglan before and it was a little fiddly joining the sleeves in but worked pretty well and there was almost no sewing up at the end.


The only departure from the prescribed pattern was the owl eyes. I had intended to use buttons as the pattern suggested, and got some of the smallest ones I could find. But they still looked a bit big for their faces, and not in a cutesy manga type way. The impression they gave was more like, I'm a top predator with super bionic night vision and I'm going to swoop down and break your arm. This wasn't quite the right sort of ambience for an item of baby clothing. So I rummaged through my drawer of craft related tat and found these plain wooden beads, which had a much less sinister air. It would probably have been easier if I'd thought about this during the actual knitting bit rather than when I'd cast off, then I could have had the option of knitting the beads in somehow. As it was I strung them all onto a piece of thin but super strong quilting cotton and sewed it invisibly round the circumference of the jumper afterwards, tying it in about 150 knots so the eyes don't all simultaneously fall off if the baby sneezes.

Not possible to get modelled photos yet unfortunately, so I don't know how the fit is. But the jumper does look like it would accommodate a fat baby belly quite nicely. It was great fun to make - I may even have to do another one for my wee man.