Aaron The Llama

My son has recently become obsessed with the Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney. She’s a fun author who writes in rhythmic rhyme. Either way, it was a lovely respite from The Fish Book (Aka One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish). For the last six months, that has been the only acceptable bedtime story! I can recite it from memory! So, when we finally got to switch books, I got it into my head to make a llama.

To start this project, I needed to do a little bit of research. I started looking at pictures of llamas, llama anatomy, and discovered the difference between a llama and an alpaca. Other than the fact that llamas inexplicably have two l’s at the beginning of their name and alpacas have only one, alpacas are much smaller and their coat is softer and they produce more wool. Yay more inane information stored away in my brain. Though it has brought about a desire to raise alpacas and learn to spin wool into yarn…. But I digress,

When I started the llama, I knew I wanted to make him shapely, not just a bunch of tubes stuck together, so counting stitches was ESSENTIAL. Normally, I just start with a circle and go from there. I had to make the bottom of the front stick out to get the llama to look right, and So I had to make the front two legs slightly shorter so they would fit properly and not make the llama look stunted in the back. Basically he was a pain to make, but the finished product looks amazingly like a llama.

I think his ears were my favorite part though. Despite their simplicity in design, they curled perfectly and only took about 8 stitches to complete. They look so cute perched on top of his head.

When I went to do his little tuft of hair on his forehead, It kept sticking straight out, so I just tacked it down with some thread and voila, perfect llama hair!

My next llama project is to make llama llama’s doll. Anna Dewdney was really excited when they made a stuffed animal out of llama llama red pajama, but IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE LLAMA LLAMA! So, I’m going to make her one and send it to her, or maybe give it to her at the next book signing I see….. whichever, I’m going to make her one as a “thank you” for writing awesome children’s books.

So here are the rest of the pictures of Aaron