The Woven Owl

Spending so much time on the last monkey naturally led to me wanting to make more, but I wanted to freshen things up – change up the faces, clothing, embellishments etc…..  My first monkey was pretty devoid of all these things – pretty much a cut and dry pattern with color changes. Even the face was pretty simple – though admittedly pretty cute.

I’ve been playing around with faces, since I’m hoping to make many more of these little guys (ok scratch that – they are a bit big) for some Xmas craft shows. I’m also working on a mini version, but for whatever reason my brain has been foggy with getting the pattern scaled correctly. I’ll probably come back to it later and wonder how I overcomplicated it to begin with, but until then my “mini monkey” is sitting loathingly in a basket somewhere. Or it may have been cannibalized for it’s wool… Possibly.

Anyways, I came up with a face for a little lady monkey. I started playing around with a bit of embroidery thread and voila – a really minor change – just adding the eye color and eyelashes, but I think it looks a lot cleaner than faces I’ve previously done.

Unfortunately, I think I may have created a new crafty addiction by doing this. I now scour the aisles at Michaels looking for new thread colors and after visiting Michelle’s Scissor Quirk Blog and seeing the beautiful embroideries there, I kind of want to try my hand at hoop embroidery. My husband will probably rant at me for having more unfinished/half started projects while complaining that his house is being taken over by crafty messiness – so I will hold off. For now. Did I mention I’m looking into making a puffy quilt? *Grin.

After the face, I gave her a girly skirt, but kept most of the color changing aspects of the pattern. I think the next one may get a crocheted dress instead, just to spice things up.