Little Giraffe!

So, I've been waving various giraffe body parts in front of my husband's face for days with little reaction, but when he came home today he noticed, unsolicited, the finished giraffe sitting on the dresser and said "cute giraffe!"  This was closely followed by "how long did it take?" which you just know is going to be followed by him placing an "order"... he makes an excellent sweatshop taskmaster!

Anyway, I am going to be extremely novel and write up the FO on the day I finished it!

Little Giraffe I

Date:
September 30 - October 7, 2008

Yarn:
By my calculations, about 28 yards of Sundara Sock Yarn in Citrus Zinger LE, and about 21 yards of MadelineTosh Sock Yarn in Ginseng

Needles:
US #1 Addi Turbo 32" circulars

Pattern:
Little Giraffe by Christine Landry

The story:

So of course I recently got into this whole crazy Sundara business of competitive yarn buying... and was strangely drawn to and somehow managed to score some sock yarn in citrus zinger (limited edition).  I think that even at the time I had some idea in my head of a giraffe soft toy.  Of course, the challenge was to get my hands on a contrasting color and while I did manage to get some toasted orange over pistachio from the ravelry boards, that wasn't until after I had already ordered a whole bunch of MadelineTosh sock yarn in various giraffy colors.

The pattern itself worked out great and was very addictive.  The legs were a little fiddly, and I did soak and block them to even out the color work.  Once you join the legs together though you start stuffing as you go so you can't do that with the body or neck.  It didn't seem to matter though.  I think all in all it was 6-8 hours of work.

There does some to be an error in the neck chart as all of a sudden the squares aren't centered, so I changed that.  I hesitated about adding the horns but I'm definitely glad I did - it's an extra little cute detail

All in all it was an incredibly satisfying knit - quick and oh so cute!  And it uses so little yarn... I'm going to have tons of sock yarn left for other projects, even after I knit a medium sized and large sized giraffe by upsizing the pattern.  

In progress shots:

Finished shots:

 

And here little giraffe is frolicking amongst the yarn for the next giraffe or two...





Little Giraffe is about 5" tall.

Flickr set is here.

Ravelry link is here.

Comments

[Natasha]

I haven't doubled a pattern before and I loved your idea of making a family of these giraffes. I already made one, following the original pattern. How do you increase a pattern by 1.5? Is that just multiplying each row by that factor?