Working on a Crochet Giraffe

I've been working on this crochet giraffe, and loving it!

My FIL recently had a health scare which landed him in the hospital for several weeks, followed by doctor home-visits.

Anyways, doc has a little boy and my in laws asked me to make him a softy for Christmas.

I showed them the miniature 3.5" Little Bigfoot Giraffe I had crocheted in cotton thread back in 2012 (pattern by Amigurumi to Go), and we decided on a giraffe just like it but bigger!

For the past few weeks, I have been working tirelessly, on-and-off designing, creating, and taking tutorials pictures for this cute giraffe.

Little Bigfoot Giraffe - Pattern by Amigurumi to Go - Crocheted in Thread - Fits in the palm of my hand at 3.5" tall.

I've already made bigger versions of 3 other Amigurumi to Go's patterns that we did as CALs last year. So, I knew I could fall back on those to get started on this giraffe.

Here, I'm starting to attach a small spot onto an arm.

Those three patterns taught me an invaluable technique for joining all the little pieces as I crochet.

I knew I had to do that for this giraffe too, since it safes time and means less sewing later.

Can you imagine how awful it would be to have to sew all of the spots on later and weave in all those ends?

Aah.. no thanks! I am way too lazy for that.

Besides, look to the left (or above if on mobile) to see just how easy it is to join as you go!

Since, I am going to do the join-as-you-go method, all of the minor pieces need to be crocheted first, starting with all of those spots!

I decided on two simple sizes. Combined, I used about 35 spots for the whole giraffe.

Since the body was going to be easier to figure out than the head, I got all the spots, arms and legs ready first. Let's just say lot's of frogging was involved while working on this giraffe!

For anyone who doesn't know, frogging refers to ripping out (a.k.a. rip it, rip it or ribit, ribit) crochet that has already been done to go back and fix a mistake or re-purpose yarn for another use.

I had crocheted both arms and legs before I decided I wanted to join the spots rather than sew them on later. This meant I had to frog both after I figured out where I wanted the spots to go. Since they are rather small, it wasn't a biggie.

Then, using my Grape Ape Monkey as a model for the body, I tried to envision where the spots should go. I had crocheted about half of the body when I realized that I was putting the spots far closer together when compared to the arms and legs. It looked way weird.

Rip it, rip it!

Arms and legs stuffed and ready to go!

I tried again, but it wasn't coming out right as I was restyling it, so I left it, grabbed another thread and started again. Using the spot positions I liked and eliminating the rest, I finally got it how I liked.

Legs Attached!

I crocheted the body up until the round where I needed to attach the legs.

I set it aside here until I had a sunny morning.

Armed with my camera and my make-shift lightbox tent, I took tutorial pictures outside as I attached each leg.

Then, I got out of heat and continued crocheting the body up to the round before the arm attachment round.

So far so good!

The next morning was sunny too, so I took tutorial pictures as I worked the arm joining round.

The following day I had finally finished the body and took pics as I stuffed it. :D

Arms Attached!

Body Complete!

Now, this giraffe works up really quickly, but having to stop after each step for tutorial pictures, meant I had to kill lots of time with other parts and projects like the Ken tees and pencil toppers.

Facial Features & Spots

On the same night that I crocheted the arms and legs, I designed and crocheted all the facial features too.

These include the pairs of horns, ears, eyes and the muzzle.

On another sunny morning I took pictures as I embroidered the nostrils and mouth onto the muzzle.

It took me a few tries to figure out the ears and eyes, but I am quite pleased with the results.

On Friday last, I started crocheting the giraffe's head so I could figure out placement for the facial features and all the spots.

However, before I even thought about where the spots should go, I needed to figure out all the rest.

Even more frogging ensued as I crocheted, checked it out, decided it was not quite right and ripped it all out again. Over and over again this went after I attached each feature.

I spent a lot of time messing around with the horn and eye placement. On the other hand, the muzzle and ears where easy to figure out.

Happy with the facial feature placements, I placed some spots on the finished piece to get an idea for placement. After a couple more tries crocheting the head with the spots too, I finally got it!

On Sunday, armed with my notes, I sat down to take pictures of each attachment round as I started to crochet the giraffe's head again. I got as far as round 13 of 23 before the rain came along and I had to pause here...

Head Halfway Complete...

This weekend, I hope to complete the photo tutorial and sort the 230+ WIP photos I have thus far. I have already deleted all of the duplicate shots and hope to be able to eliminate more of them.

God willing, I will have the pattern ready for my testers in August as I had planned.

And if the testing phase goes well in August, you'll get to crochet giraffes with me in a 3-week Autumn CAL! Hopefully this September 2016. How does that sound to you?

Let me know what you think! I love hearing from you...

P.S. I am trying to decide on a name for this cutie. Any ideas?