Emotional Support Chicken

 Yes, this is a thing.

This is a knitting pattern that came out a couple years ago. Earlier this year there was a knitalong on ITFF but I was busy at that point and wasn't sure I even wanted one, but the more I saw them, the more I liked the idea. So I bought the pattern and dug around in my stash for yarn (it takes a standard worsted weight and I tend to prefer acrylics for toys/pillows). 

I had some Lion Brand Heartland in a sort of an oatmeal color and in a dark brown, and I used scraps of an orangey red and a yellow that were up at my mother's 

It's a clever but complicated pattern and maybe isn't for the veriest beginner - it uses a LOT of short row shaping and it's one of those things where you just have to trust the pattern at points - I knew a lot of people had made it so any errors would have been worked out, but there are places where it doesn't make sense until you actually sit down and do it. 

It's all garter stitch, which takes more yarn (it's a bit over 200 yards of the main color and less, I don't know how much less, for the stripes). 

Except for the underbelly and comb and wattle, it's entirely knit flat and then seamed up. (It's a simple chicken - there are no wings and the tail is in one piece with the body, but it does very much have the feel of a chicken to it, at least an idealized chicken that doesn't set off allergies or try to peck you when you hold it)

When I finished the  body I laid it out and then laughed and said "spatchcocked"

 You sew up the head and neck first, and then put in an underbelly (not shown) and then stuff and sew up the tail end.

 It's pretty satisfying when finished:

 She is LARGE. Life size, or maybe a bit larger compared to the smaller chicken breeds. You use lock-washer eyes which have the right kind of stare-y chicken expression (you could use buttons as well)

I named mine Hortense, which seems to fit

 Here is Hortense coming back with me on the train:

 I'm going to make a couple more of these - one as a gift for a colleague who is kind of stressed out AND is having to do an overload this fall because of the failed job search. And my niece is VERY into chickens (she raises them for 4-H) and my mom tells me "13 won't be too old to want a knitted chicken like that" so I am going to make her one for her birthday in October. 

I will probably use "fantasy colors" for my colleague's chicken - either blue to match some of the ornaments in her office - or if I have enough, a pink, white, and black variegated for a gothy chicken. My niece's, I have an orange and will try to find a green for the contrast so it will look a little like a Cochin or a Redcap (I had to look those up - I think I have seen Cochins before but didn't know what they were called). 

Purls' Yarn Emporium in Asheville takes donations of these if people just want to make but not keep them; they give them to LGBTQ teens who are going through rough times.