My sister, along with becoming a slightly-crazy cat lady (current count 3), is also well on her way to becoming a crazy chicken lady. At current count she has over a dozen birds of all number of types. Not just chickens either. There were pheasants and quail for a while. Now, keeping the chickens company are 2 peahens and a peacock.
When am I going to get to the bit about the Most Interesting Gift? Wait for it...
A friend (and country neighbour) of Alison's has 3 charming children. They all love the chickens too. In fact they adopted one. The kids named her Smokey Cheeky Fluffy-Pants.
For Christmas last year Alison gave this friend a pair of fuzzy pajama pants - navy blue with pink spots.
And then asked me to knit my Most Interesting Gift to date.
A sweater.
For the chicken.
Navy blue.
With pink spots.
Please.
See what I mean? I think I managed to pull it off ok in the end:
Yup, that is Smokey Cheeky Fluffy-Pants in her new sweater getting comfortable on the new PJ pants. Not a bad match on the colours either (to my relief, as I actually had never seen the pajamas).
Where's the pattern you may ask? Right here
As it turns out, battery hens (as commercial laying hens are called over the pond) often lose their feathers. There are organizations that both adopt out these chickens AND others that provide hand knitted sweaters to keep them warm in the mean time, providing a pattern to any who wish to use it.
Sizing a chicken for a sweater is no easy task. For future reference, Cheeky is "a large-ish teapot".
And no, there would be NO WAY to get that on over a chicken's head. You can't see it here, but there are side buttons.
Did you see the "for now" above? Another friend has just asked me to design and knit a sweaters for his greyhounds....
