Ah, what a sweet Giraffe!

The last week I have taken advantage of the abundance of sit and wait time to create another Christmas gift. This one is called Not so Itty Bitty Giraffe. I bought an online course and pattern for this from Craftsy. I thought, since I enjoy making toys so much, I would benefit from listening and watching an expert. I did learn a few new techniques, so it was worth the cost of the course (which I bought during one of the 50 % off specials, and that made it even more attractive!) This is a BIG toy, compared to the others that I have made. All of my cats are very suspicious of it, and they will just sneak up to it and give it a sniff before backing away. Perhaps cats don't like giraffes? :D

I used Bernat SuperSaver yarn, in cameo for the main colour and grape for the contrast. Not real giraffe colours, of course, but the world would be a very dull place without splashes of unexpected colour. I may make another in rust with dark brown contrast, and open eyes. For this one, I did as the pattern and video explained. For most things I will follow the pattern for the initial project and then go my own way on further creations. This pattern is also seamless, which was great. The entire project was worked on double pointed needles or circular needles. The smaller things, like the tail and horns were a bit tricky on the double pointed needles, but as they were so short, it went quickly.

This is before the face and spots were added. You can see how BIG this one is!

And this is the finished giraffe. All that work tired her right out! 

I thought I would be a rebel and make open eyes, but once I did the trial eyes as instructed, I could not take them off as she was so cute. And so, she is a sleepy giraffe!

I had fun with this project. I used my own pompom maker invention for the needed pompoms. This is really just the straight part of a wire coat hanger, cut off and folded over into a U shape. I needed 1 inch pompoms, so I kept the arms of the U about that distance apart, and held them that way with an elastic on one end. Then I wound they yarn around about 30 times, tied the middle securely (I found a great way to do this on the video that I did not think of), slid it off of the wire and cut the loops. Viola! A pompom with no fiddling with cardboard (which I find often buckles or is hard to slide the yarn off of still in the needed position to do the securing into a pompom).