Since my grandson Max (who will be 4 yrs. old in January) does not read my blog, I am free to write about my Christmas gift for him.  I am knitting him a llama.

He loves the books by Anna Dewdney that feature Llama Llama – a child llama who experiences many of the same emotional episodes common to the human pre-school crowd (such as being fed up at the “shop-o-rama” and missing his mama on the first day of school).  Llama Llama carries a lovey – a cuddly little llama – and it is this lovey-llama that I am attempting to replicate with needles and yarn.

I have had the idea and even the yarn for about a year-and-a-half, I confess.  I also realize that little boys do not stay little llama forever!  And if I wait too long …well, unless Ms Dewdney comes up with some pre-adolescent experiences for Llama Llama, my knitted lovey-llama will have sort of missed its mark.

So, this Christmas, I will present Max with a hand-knit llama.

I am using taupe Baby Ull yarn – and a variety of knitting techniques gleaned from Hansi Singh’s fabulous Amigurumi Knits combined with my sock-knitting experience – to create the llama.  Sort of making it up as I go along. 

The llama-lovey in the book resembles a real llama about as much as a teddy bear resembles a real grizzly bear.  But the point is to make it look like the book llama, not a real live llama.  So, I carefully study the book illustrations, then knit a little.  Then, study the proportion of neck (kinda long) to body (kinda chubby).  And then I knit a little.  Oh, and there was a great deal of increase/decrease technique (inner) debate, a deep consideration about short rows, and I have yet to decide if the lovey-llama’s legs and feet look enough like socks to justify my making them up as little socks….

I had begun knitting the neck as a tube – and then as I was progressing down the body, I realized that the neck in the book illustration has a seam down the side!  Crap, I thought.  Perhaps I could stitch on one afterward (although I had intentionally made the increases down the front of the belly “seam-like” to mimic the seam in the illustration that I had noted – it was a little more obvious than the neck seam).

It was at this point that I was blessed with a little bit of wise insight: 

I am knitting this llama for a small boy who is unlikely to care about painstakingly detailed replication of a look illustration.  As long as it looks fairly like the lovey-llama in the book – and if we say “hey, look, it is a lovey-llama just like Llama Llama’s lovey-llama!” – it will probably be fine.

And anyhow I am pretty sure I can get the ears just right.  Ears are important on a llama.