Post 2, In which I describe my transformation to Crazy Owl Lady

I'm not really sure how my obsession with owls began. It all happened so quickly, one would think that owls were always a part of who I was. I was always a fan of fairytales and mythology my whole life, but owls never seemed to feature highly on my radar until I began papercraft.

collage I made for colleague

2 years ago, I made a colleage an owl collage for them to decorate their desk at work and other colleages kept asking for more (I'm not sure why as I think it looks like it was made by a 6 year old). A few months later, on my birthday, I was given a beautiful owl necklace, other colleages gave me other owl related items on this birthday and my owl collection proliferated. By the time Christmas rolled around I had over 50 owl items, as it seemed that it longer needed to be an occaision for people to give me owls it was more along the lines of "I saw this owl and thought of you". No prizes for guessing what I got for Christmas that year.

Christmas presents

It was ok though, somewhere between my birthday and Christmas I fell in love with these creatures and I now know a whole lot more about them.

I really love that in western culture, owls are associated with wisdom and in a way I think that they really represent us librarians somehow. If we look at the attributes associated with owls we have:
Wise
Dedicated
Helpful
Intelligent
Respected

And owls are never:
Lazy
Self-centred
Aggressive

That card is from something called the Organizational Zoo, check it out, you can find out which animal represents you.

I think that most librarians have these 'owl' qualities and maybe that's why so many of us are owl fans.

Curiously, in Japanese mythology, owls are a symbol of good luck and in Indian mythology, they are considered a bad omen.

Last year, I began to make Japanese lucky owls. If you give them away, they bring you luck. I think I made over 100 of them and gave them away mostly to my colleagues. Last year I won 6 of the prizes in the Christmas raffle, and a big egg in the easter raffle, so I really am thinking they have brought me luck.

super lucky double happiness owls

If you would like to make your own double lucky happiness owl, check out my tutorial on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/happylibrarykat/sets/72157624780545993/

Things that have happened recently that have made me giggle:
The other day, a colleague brought her 10 year old son in with her for the morning. She later confessed to me that her son was impressed with the Owl lady's collection of Angry Birds (made by @jobeaz and @HaikugirlOz).

My friend's baby's 4th word was "Hooo Hooo" spoken only when seeing and pointing at an owl. When she comes to my house (full of owls) it's non stop hoo hooing. She now is obsessed with owls.

Let us all be like owls.