Hi! I've enjoyed reading posts here for a while, but finally I have a question of my own to pose...First, though, by way of introduction: I'm a
Latin teacher, and I've been knitting off and on since I was little, but
more and more recently. Especially purple and gold hats, those being the colors of
Latin club.
Anyway, I've decided it's time for a new Roman costume. I want to make it based on
this statuette of Minerva/Athena, complete with her symbols of the aegis and the owl. Looking at the aegis in that picture, I started thinking how it looks like a little knit capelet...thus, the wacky idea of knitting my own aegis! And a knit owl too, because that'd be much more fun than just buying a toy owl to carry around. Not at all historically accurate for a Greco-Roman goddess to have a
knitted aegis, but hey, she's the goddess of handicrafts. Knitting seems appropriate. :-)
So, for the owl, I found
this pattern but I'm not crazy about it. I know there are books of knitted toy animals out there; do any of them contain a good pattern for an owl, preferably less cartoon-y and more realistically shaped? Or does anyone know of any other owl patterns?
For the aegis...That's generally depicted as bearing the head of Medusa; you can see her face in
the picture over Minerva's left shoulder. I'd love to be able to incorporate a Medusa-head pattern somehow into the aegis. I've never done intarsia, but maybe that would work? Or duplicate stitch? Or a purl-on-stockinette-background pattern? Or...what I think I'd like best, could one somehow knit Medusa in lacework, just in that one corner of the aegis-capelet?
Thanks for any ideas and suggestions you can offer!