FO Friday #10: Hootenany

I present to you the adorably woolly face of evil.

Hoot?

These little owl faces represent five hours of work... for just the eyeballs and the beaks! Each mitten had about 20 or so ends to weave in, too. However, they did come out darn cute and they are pretty much exactly what my coworker commissioned for her little daughter so hopefully the little owl-obsessed girl loves them!

The one on the right looks extra surprised.

I used Cascade 220 superwash in an appropriately owl-y color for the body of the mitts held double. I knit most of one mitten before deciding I needed to cast on a few more stitches because although 2-year-old hands are tiny, they do grow and the fabric was extra thick so I wanted to give a little more room in there. But the rest of the mitten knitting went fairly smoothly and I followed this blog's tips for making the white 'brow' part at the top. I felt like a mitten-knitting-genious... until I hit the eyeballs.

Attempt #1: single crochet circle. Attempt #2: knit in the round with lots of increases.

 

I even have crochet the old college try for this project (a.k.a. an hour of internet searching when I should've been doing other things). This only confirmed for me that I still hate crochet. It feels entirely unnatural to me. Even the basic chain stitch comes out all wonky and as I'm using my fingers to pull the loops over the hook, I can't help wishing for an implement to help in the process... like another needle. Knitter to the core, I suppose. So then I tried knitting a tiny circle in the round with lots of increases but that was too ruffly. Finally, I cast on 4 sts to a DPN and did short rows within those 4 sts until I had a curved strip of knitting long enough to kitchener the two ends together into an approximate circle. Phew! I don't keep a lot of superwash yarn lying around but I had some Bugga mini-skeins that I used for the brow and the irises, Cascade 220 sw for the pupils, and Socks that Rock Heavyweight scraps for the beaks. In sum, these mittens are quite cute and came out just as I'd hoped but I will likely never make them again... the finishing was far too fiddly.

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