Sticking my neck out

My modus operandi for knit and crochet projects seems to be biting off more than I can chew, usually in the form of enormous blankets that take me months, or even years, to finish. I decided that I should maybe take a different approach and try a few smaller scale projects here and there, especially stash-busting efforts that would slowly nibble away at my modest stockpile of odds and ends.

Way back in June, I mentioned that my goal for the month was to try some amigurumi toward this end. I don’t know if there is a specific definition of amigurumi, but I take it to mean the crocheting of cute, small, and sometimes eclectic items, particularly animals and sometimes objects. I don’t know how small amigurumi is technically supposed to be, but I fell in love with this adorable giraffe, which claims to be amigurumi but is a bit large. Amigurumi or no, I decided I wanted to try my hand at whipping up a stuffed animal in crochet, starting with this one.

I actually had seen a photo of this giraffe on Pinterest for almost a year before I stumbled upon the pattern for sale on Etsy. And believe me, I looked for it for months. I was excited to finally get the pattern and start on it. It did take me four months, but to be fair I was traveling for about four of those weeks and spend another two weeks waiting for the delivery of the craft eyes. Otherwise, I really don’t have a lot of excuses for the other weeks it sat around while waiting to be finished. But I finally got all my supplies and made a final push to get this guy assembled this week.

It really didn’t take all that long to complete from start to finish, and it really is darned cute. My only complaint is that the long neck makes the head a little floppy, and it’s hard to get it to stand upright on its own. However, I suspect that this will be gifted to a small human who will want to squeeze it and chew on it, so it’s never going to be sitting upright anyway. And they won’t even know the difference.

I feel like I and the babies in my life (and probably lots of adults, too) need more cute, knitted and crocheted stuffed animals. Maybe I’ll attempt another giraffe sometime, but I know there are hundreds of patterns out there on the internet for adorable animals. What do you think would be a cute species to immortalize in yarn?