Knitted Owl and Mouse

Stalking Amy Gaines... 


I feel like I'm stalking Amy Gaines. I just love her knitting patterns and want to make them all!


This is Odessa Owl from Amy's recent book Little Knitted Creatures. The book is a supercute collection of all manner of knitted animals ranging from fish to birds to farmyard animals. Odessa is from the woodland creatures collection, which is my personal favourite.

As with Amy's other patterns, the owl is knitted on straight, albeit spindly (3.5mm) needles. One difference I noticed in the book is that a lot of the patterns use an invisible increase rather than the usual knit forwards and backwards for the shaping. I couldn't quite see how the increase worked so I used kfb as normal and it worked out fine.

I knitted Odessa using Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran in brown and camel. I'm still working on the neatness of my seaming but she isn't bad. The features are made from felt and Odessa has black safety eyes. I'm very much looking forward to making the rest of the woodland chapter except perhaps the gnomes...

Mousey here is an Amy Gaines PDF pattern from her Etsy Shop.

 I knitted the mouse using some leftover Sirdar eco wool for the body and ears. Unfortunately, I ran out before I got to the ears and had lost the band from the wool. I ordered some online and guessed the shade wrongly. Eventally I got the right colour (flint) in a wool shop in St Annes on Sea and no it probably wasn't the same dye lot either!

I decided to do a crochet chain for the tail. Mousey is currently whiskerless, however, as I can't get them to look right...

I think Amy's patterns are so appealing because they are really cute and impressive yet very easy to follow and make. I'm currently trying to persuade myself to learn how to use double-pointed needles but with patterns of this quality available for straight needles, I'm not too worried if I don't master the evil DPNs.

Melx