Knit Llama

It look like Red Heart came out with another No Drama Llama only in knit this time.  It’s cute, definitely.   The only unfortunate thing is, it’s clearly unbalanced in the head and body because it includes directions to weight down the body (a problem I was running into before I scaled down my patterns head and lengthened the body again) using a bag of rice, and the head and neck is too big so it requires support of a dowel.  Tsk tsk. The head is like 90% of the body size, so, yeah. The legs appear to be useless decoration and do not hold the llama up nor balance it, and you are still covering at least 50% of your cool loopies with a blanket. They also removed the leg loopies and put stripes of color instead.

Like I said, super cute.  It’s a style choice I’m sure. I was also considering doing the ‘loopies’ on mine but the chains makes it look fuller.

Pretty Ponchos

Hey I’ve been slacking in writing.  I’ve done a few ponchos lately with that big old pile of yarn I bought recently.  I was doing 8 rows of the virus stitch but I’m kind of short so I dropped it at 7, which on me still hits below an untucked shirt.  8 rows I’d consider to be large and would almost hit my knees.  We’re all not short though!

The black and white ones are longer!

Troubleshooting Patterns

It’s been somewhat rare I keep a pattern exactly as I find it, either revising quite a bit or just a little.  Here are a few I made tweaks to and why.

Basic grannie square cocoon cardigan:  I learned this originally from Yarntopia .  It drives me bananas to crochet with a hook larger than the yarn, but it really does make it drape better.  However, the double crochet border in my opinion, felt too light.

The other one was from Annoo Crochet Designs where I picked up the front post/back post ribbed effect on the sleeves.  She did a front post crochet all around the border, which looks good if you sew it together like for a sleeve of the sides of the coat, but if you do it by itself, it curls up because it’s literally stair steps of crochet on top of each other.  I didn’t care for that so I did the front and back post to even if out even on the border.  I really need to use a bigger hook though, I just ughghghg.

Romantic Boho Sweater Coat: Another one from Annoo which is very, very pretty.   I just learned to really dislike how delicate Red Heart Unforgettable is and felt it did not pair well at all with the thick front post crochet layers for the arms and sides, and felt the double crochet inner border didn’t match the rest of the coat.  I substituted Lion Brand Landscapes for the Unforgettable, and used double skein Caron Simply Soft for the inner border.  But, if I ever make it again, I will probably just use a worsted weight yarn instead of the Caron, and the Landscapes.  That way both types of yarn will be on par with each other.  I actually started to make a third but then said NOPE and I’m going to make a bag.  Whenever I get around to it.

Ivory Virus Cocoon Sweater

Finished a white one! This takes considerably longer than a poncho, but I think I’m going to focus on just a few patterns these days.  The alpaca, virus poncho, and virus cocoon sweater.

In my shop now!

My Best in Show Alpaca Pattern

It took some doing but I put together the steps I use for my alpacas.  I messed around with getting it on Raverly but you have to fill out pages and pages of stuff and geez forget it maybe another time. But finally, finally, I have added it to my Etsy Shop.

CatchMeHooking Best in Show Alpaca

And I’d like to point out that unlike some other versions, mine WILL stand up on its own without tipping over.

Just a wee bit of history on this.  It was originally the No Drama Llama that Red Heart offered for free in a pattern they emailed me.  I thought it was cute and made my first one, which I screwed up because the steps were vague as heck in many areas, can you tell I sewed the neck/chest on BACKWARDS because the pattern didn’t say which way to put it?:

Then I was like wow, this came out BIG.  Like REALLY BIG.  I wanted it smaller, I thought it would be cuter.  So I used Caron Simply Soft which is a “4” but feels smaller than that and made this guy:

He was still just TOO BIG!  I started by scaling the face way down, the neck down, which helped reduce the body and made this little lady:

I wanted to make it maybe a little smaller so I tried scaling the body down more and the legs smaller, and made this guy:

Cute but, I thought the eyes were now too big.  I scaled the eye size down.  The body was a little too small so I went back to the original. Then I made this one:

The back of the head was a little too big but I thought perhaps the body was too long, so I tried for a smaller one on this one:

And the light green one.  No, the small body made the legs harder to place and made the alpaca a little top heavy. SOOOO I scaled the back of the head down more, went back to the original body width and length,

I though this one was nearly PERFECT.  Smaller face, head, body, legs, eyes.  But but but.  I did all that work for the fleece on it and I’m covering a big part of it with a blanket.  That’s pretty dumb, isn’t it?  And mine were so small and cute I felt they really weren’t “llamas” any more, they were alpacas, who, let’s be honest, are just cuter all around.

I then removed the blanket and came up with my own design (based off a grannie square) for a wreath instead.  And the “Best In Show Alpaca” was born!

I also did a lamb version with a two-tone variation and sheep ears:

Needless to say this whole process of testing and rewriting took several months.