Oscar is made in honor of my dad’s 75th birthday. The following is from a newspaper clipping he has carried in his wallet since he was a teenager. It has always been his mantra and I aspire for it to me mine as well….

A wise old owl lived in an oak.
The more he saw, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

Now on to the project…

To obtain the desired effect for the eyes, I changed the sequence that the head motifs were joined so that the eye motifs were last (with the exception of the final “closing” motif).

To convert from an owlet to a wise old owl :-) I added feathered “eyebrows”. Here are the instructions:

Special Stitch: BLT: Beginning linked treble - not the sandwich :-). Insert hook in 2nd ch from the hook, yo and draw up a loop; (skip 1 ch, insert hook in next ch, yo and draw up a loop) twice. There should now be 4 loops on the hook. (Yo and draw through 2 loops) 3 times.

Eyebrow 1: Chain 12. Sc in the 2nd ch from the hook and each of the next 4 ch, 2 sc in the next ch, hdc in next, 2 hdc in next, dc in next, 2 dc in next, 3 tr in the last ch, ch 4, sl st in the same st as the 3 tr. Finish off.

Eyebrow 2: Chain 16. BLT (see Special Stitches above), 2 tr in same st as BLT; 2 dc in the next ch, dc in the next, 2 hdc in the next, hdc in the next, 2 sc in the next, sc in each of the last 5 ch. Finish off.

In a contrasting color, reverse sc around each brow.

I wanted the feet just a little larger, so I switched to a B-hook and extended the beginning chain for each “toe” to 13, then insert one extra sc, hdc and dc along each side of the chain.