Edward's Menagerie - Caitlin the Giraffe

Hot on the heels of  Benedict the Chimpanzee who featured in my review of Edward's Menagerie last week I had another project on my hook.

Much as I am a lover of colour I've been really enjoying working in more muted shades for these guys. They just look more friendly somehow which is a statement I am well aware makes no sense.

Anyway, this guy's face is just a little bit too much for me. It's off the cute-scale by about a hundred degrees. And I also really love his ossicones. I also love that I now know the word ossicones. Let's all try and get it into a sentence tomorrow, although I'm pretty sure the only sentence you can get it into is one that's something along the lines of "Oh look, that giraffe has a lovely set of ossicones." You never know, it might crop up at some point.

The part I really enjoyed about making Caitlin though was the body. Again, as with everything I love about this book, it's so simple and yet looks absolutely amazing. The patches of darker colour are just worked randomly as you're working the body, not cutting the colour off each time you change but keeping it at the back until you need to pick it up again.

Working anything randomly is a huge struggle for me and I had to resist all my natural urges to basically have a very long necked zebra. Stripes are neat, I can handle that.

It also meant that a stitch counter and stitch marker were absolutely essential as it would be very tricky to work random numbers of stitches and still keep count of what you were doing over all.

But totally worth it, am I right?!

Caitlin is a new firm favourite for me and I'm looking for an excuse to make another one as soon as possible.

She's also a good old size once she's finished. She's sat next to a 6x4in photo frame so you can see how tall she is. As she should be, she's a bloody giraffe!

The only thing I would do differently next time around is makes sure I stuffed the neck more so that she's able to keep her head up. I followed the general rules to not overstuff and keep everything floppy but I just don't think it really works for Caitlin. These photos involved an awful lot of balancing to keep her head up and I felt a bit rubbishy at how floppy her head was.

I'm still in love with this book and I've got to tell you right now, that I've already finished my next item from it.

And now that one might be my favourite...