Ow-ul

One thing about knitting for other people's children: it makes you feel guilty if you haven't knitted for your own child in a while.  Ms. Z has a very favorite onesie -- it has an owl on it and it's one of the few items of clothing that she will let you put on her without struggling.  She'll point to it and say "Ow-ul! Ow-ul!" when she sees it.  In fact, almost any owl will elicit that response, so it seems that my daughter has developed a thing for nocturnal birds of prey and that gave me an idea for creating a toy for her.

Sometime back, Mary recommended a great amigurumi book to me at one of our KIP nights.



While I thought the projects were adorable, I hadn't sat myself down with it and tried anything out.  When I was thinking about toys, I pulled it out and saw the owl and knew that I needed to see if I could make one for Z.  Well, one trip to JoAnn's and an afternoon later, the owl was made.  And Z was incredibly excited to see me working on it.  When she finally got it into her hands, she just smiled and smiled and ran around the play area "Ow-ul!  Ow-ul!  Ow-ul!" showing it to her father and me any time she could.  And Ow-ul has quickly become one of those toys that she pays attention to.  She regularly wants to know where Ow-ul is and every time she even sees the Amigurumi World book, she tries to grab it and reminds me who is on the cover.

For the record, Ow-ul is made out of Lion Brand "Vanna's Choice" yarn -- a worsted weight 100% acrylic yarn that has just the slightest halo that makes it a nice choice for animal toys because it gives them that vaguely fuzzy quality.   You might wonder why I would actually go out and buy acrylic when I have a collection of Cascade 220 in my stash.  There are some very good reasons:

• It's washable, and even 16 month old babies still like to chew on their toys occasionally.  They also like to try to give their toys a bath in the kitty water bowl, they take them outside and sometimes toys get invited to dinner when you didn't expect company.  So washability is a must.
• It's soft and comfortable to knit with.  I've crocheted with enough cotton to know that over time it hurts my hands a little bit if I am making a stiffer fabric, which is required for stuffed toys.
• It's cheap.  It was 30% off at JoAnn's and that made it almost as cheap as Red Heart. And it's much nicer than Red Heart from a texture perspective.  It makes no sense to spend a lot of money on yarn for a toy that will probably get a lot of love and abuse.
• It's durable.  Ms. Z was gifted with an acrylic fuzzy blanket that has become her one and only blankie.  It gets filthy and gets washed and comes out looking like new.  If Z gets as attached to Ow-ul as she is to her blankie, I can't afford to use yarn that can't take a beating.

I thought the yarn also was quite nice to work with -- it was easy on my hands and actually felt pretty nice slipping through my fingers.  So for budget acrylic, I definitely give it a thumb's up.  It seems to come in a fair number of nice colors, too.  So it gives you a wide pallette for  toy making.

With Ow-ul under my belt and getting such a good reception, you can bet there will be more toys like this for Ms. Z in the future.  One of her other favorite words (and snacks!) is "Ap-pull" so you can guess what might be next.