Leon the Llama is Slowing Growing a Body

Written by Sequoia Abbott-Saulteaux

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Welcome back to week eight of my #LearningProject! Wow, the time has passed by so fast and we are almost to the end of the semester! I am not going to lie, I am a bit nervous about finishing Leon before this semester is up, his fur stitch is taking much longer than expected, but I promise to provide an update even if he’s finished late! I got the pattern for Leon the Llama from Yarnspirations Llama-No-Drama but after a yarn delay ending up switching his fur from Aran to Sweet Pink.

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Working on Leons Fur stitch, which is a chain of 10 in every stitch!

Leon the Llama is made from mainly three different stitches; the single crochet, the chain stitch, and the slip stitch. The fur stitch is made from a row of single crochets, then a chain of 10 stitches working into just the back loops, a chain of single crochets working into the front loops only, and then finishing off with another single crochet on top. This may sound pretty confusing at first but there is a lot of room to practice, since the fur covers up most small mistakes! The fur eats up the yarn quite quickly, I have finished Leon’s head and I’m about halfway through his body and I have almost finished an entire skein (198 grams)! Now I have come into another problem when finishing off the skein and that is a big ball of tangled mess.

The mess of yarn from the last of the Red Heart skein in Sweet Pink

I think I probably spent the better part of an hour untangling the yarn, taking some short breaks when I felt myself getting too frustrated. The one things that I am thankful for with this pattern is that I can really practice my patience since some rows have up to 600 chain stitches! I have heard through some online Crochet groups such as r/Crochet and Facebook groups such as WE LOVE CROCHET and Crochet for Beginners that some people roll their skiens themselves with tools like Yarn Ball Winders. The tool basically works by unrolling the skein of yarn you bought and rerolling it into a ball, which helps wonders with tangled centered! I feel like this would be a really good investment and I am currently debating purchasing one.

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Eventually Leon will be stitched together and stuffed!

For the most part of this pattern, I have been following The Crochet Crowd’s YouTube Tutorial pattern along with the Yarnspirations pattern. I really like having both because as I get more used to the pattern, I can understand the written pattern a lot better and then I rely less on the YouTube videos. However, the YouTube videos sometimes have some advice with the pattern that turns out to be really useful, for instance the pattern called for Leon’s head to be stitched to his body during row 20 of the pattern but instead I followed the YouTube advice of waiting several rows. This way this heavy head isn’t in the way while I work on the fur stitch of his body, which does take some time. The other great thing about YouTube videos is that I can read the comment section and see what other people are saying about the pattern.

Hopefully I will be able to finish off Leon before the semester ends but if not, again I promise to provide an update on the finished product!

Have you ever used YouTube to learn a new skill? What do you believe are some pros and cons?

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