King of the (Very Small) Jungle

This little lion was made for my coworker's first baby! This is probably the biggest thing I've made so far. It took just under a month but most of that was due to not knowing how to make the mane without using fun fur yarn like the pattern called for. I love giving handmade gifts :)




The fancy-schmancy packaging. I did try to pretty it up with a little crocheted bow in pretty variegated pastel yarn.


Incidentally, anyone else think it's more difficult to make gifts for boys? My roommate (and coworker) had already started tackling a knitted baby blanket, so I didn't want to make another blanket. Plus, I had a month to work on it before the baby's due date. My roommate had already been diligently at work on the blanket for 6 months.


And, it's almost impossible to find the right pattern for a cute amigurumi that is 1) free 2) not super difficult and 3) not terribly ugly. Besides the fact that my yarn stash has limited colors.


I pretty much narrowed it down to dinosaur or lion when I was choosing which to make, but lion won out because I couldn't find a good dinosaur pattern quickly enough. This one comes courtesy of Lion Brand Yarn.

* One thing I did change on the pattern was the way I worked the mane. I didn't have any fun fur and I could not, for the life of me, understand what the pattern was trying to tell me how to attach the fur to the head. I ended up attaching the yarn by slip stitching into the stitches of the head and adding chains to make a long loop and slip stitching back down into the head. I covered the head like this which gave it a kind of funny Rastafarian/dreadlock look, but I couldn't think of a better way to make his fur?

I do like how he turned out in the end though.
P.S. I hate not having internet at home.