Hooters

Well, folks, this is it, the one you've all been waiting for: the owl jumper! See my triumphant face:

 

I started it in August 2010, and completed it in March 2011.  Yes, that is a long time, but I was knitting and crocheting other things in-between, plus all the usual sewing/baking shenanigans you have been reading about on this here blog, so it's not like I was knitting this every night for seven months.

My boyfriend came up with the title for this post - he calls it my "hooters jumper".  He's very mature.  But since I've pretty much used up all the owl metaphors/puns/song titles I could think of in every other post I've done about these and other owls, I figured I'd go with the boy's idea.

I actually finished knitting the jumper weeks ago, but the search was on for the perfect buttons for the owls' eyes.  I am delighted with what I found:

They're actually beads, from Bijoux Beads who have a shop in Bath.  I don't know how keen your eyes are but they're like little brass flowers.  I didn't want anything too bright or plasticky-looking (although I had toyed with the idea of tiny pearl buttons for eyes, but decided against them as they would probably have looked too Sloanie, and I am no Sloane Ranger, readers).

Needless to say, I am very, very pleased with how this turned out.  I had never done cabling before, nor knitted with DPNs (remember my frustrations at this new fangled skill?), but I figured that if I was working on something that I really, really wanted to succeed at, then the skills would just come - they would have to!  It was a lot easier than I expected, to be honest.  My only slight disappointment is that it's a tiny bit too tight for my taste, so I am looking into this whole "blocking" thing that I keep hearing about.  Knitters - I have tried ironing it under a damp cloth, but this had minimal results.  Will I be better off spraying the whole thing with water and pinning it into place overnight?  I'm wondering if it might naturally stretch a bit with wear?  I have worn it a couple of times this week and by the end of the day I had either forgotten that I thought it looked tight, or it had eased up a bit.

I am still working on Jessica, the pink jumper, and I am about to embark on a new knitting project, which of course I will share with you.  So far it's not going too well: in the process of making up tension squares to figure out if I'm using the right size needles/yarn, I have discovered that the pattern is much trickier than I initially thought!  Still, as my adorable owls have taught me: practise really does make perfect.