Snowy Owl

I'm sorry to report that due to the side effects of a new medication and some design complications, I got nowhere near my goal of finishing up my four pairs of owl fingerless mitts.   In fact, I didn't even manage to finish a pair.  A few of you were so excited to see what they would like like finished today, though, that I didn't want to leave everyone totally disappointed, so I decided to share the one mitt that I was able to finish.

This pair is supposed to represent a Snowy Owl.  The first design complication I encountered were the eyes.  I decided that I wanted to make my owl mitts somewhat realistic, so I've been doing a lot of searching on google images for pictures of owl eyes.  I noticed that most of them were orange or yellow with a black outline.  First I tried to make them completely out of felt, but the black-yellow-black combo just didn't look right.  Then I got the idea of crocheting a black circle and inserting yellow and black felt inside it, but it still wasn't what I was going for.  Finally it hit me to crochet a circle out of the mitt color and insert the felt inside it giving the eye a slightly inset look, and that's what I ended up sticking with.  My second design complication was the nose.  I've tried to make it every way imaginable.  After much trial and error, I decided that I'd go with a short I-cord slightly curved under, but at the last minute I changed to the little triangle.  The I-cord may have been slightly more realistic, but every time I looked it at I thought of Gonzo from the muppets.  What do you think of the nose?  Do you like it or should I keep experimenting?  Well, I better get back to work.  I have a lot of mitts to finish up.  Tune in next week to see how the rest of the owls turned out.

Be sure to visit Tami's Amis for more FO Friday fun and Wonder Why Gal's blog to see all the wonderful Fiber Arts Friday goodies!