For Christmas last year, my cousin gave me a llama (I think from Peru). Llama quickly became a family favorite and according to my son, we share llama. I make llama talk and he has a very non Peruvian accent. Anyway, we love llama and llama is VERY soft so we wanted to give a llama back to Beth and since we’re not traveling to South America in the near future and she’s there very frequently, we decided to make a NY born llama.

Learned loop stitch from this video.

The stitch is not that hard, but the little hook hurts. I need to see if I can get a more padded hook since it looks like this is going to take a while to crochet. I think I’m going to need more yarn too.

12/12/2010: Going a lot faster than I thought it would. Body, head, and one eye done. I bought a different hook so that I wasn’t stabbed with each stitch. No more metal hook on this one. It was interesting to see how tightly the body and face shaped using a C hook. I bought more yarn just to finish the body. Hopefully it will be enough for the legs and tail too.

12/21/2010: Made a leg tonight and got confirmation that my cousin will be there on Christmas Day. How weird would a one or two legged llama be? This leg took a while. How am I going to finish 3 more legs before Saturday?

12/22/2010: Second leg done. Just 2 more to go. HAVE to at least finish the crochet for llama tomorrow, ideally sew her up too.

12/24/2010: Made the third leg yesterday and the fourth this morning. The crochet was challenging but not hard, just slow. Sewing this up has been a killer. Getting the face on is ROUGH. Putting the legs on is a little easier, but not easy. I may leave sewing on the eyes until morning. It’s been almost 5 hours of sewing and it’s not done yet… ug.

12/26/2010: Gave this to my cousin yesterday and let her know that I still needed to finish the eyes. Just finished them, just didn’t quite make it in time. She came out gorgeous but was A LOT of work. I changed the hat to make it look more NY. Used a thicker yarn, Charisma, and a larger hook, H so it wasn’t too stiff. Did the pattern in aprox half -half the rows and half the stitches- and slip stitches instead of sc for the strap at half the length, just added the one stripe and no pom pom on the top. I really like the hat. I’m considering making one for myself.

She came out totally gorgeous looking like she just stepped out of the salon with her hair done and eyelashes. She looks about 50 lbs heavier than the Peruvian llama we have. Ewing has named her Miss Llama. I kind of don’t want to give her away. I think Beth is picking her up before she flies back to NC in a few days.

P.S. Used a lot of yarn - dipped into the third skien of the main color, toast.