Crochet: Hugo the Llama

I haven’t done much amigurumi crochet. Mostly, this is because I made a worry monster in 4-ply wool once, and it was far too twiddly for me, and my understanding of amigurumi is small and cute.

However, Hugo, whom I made for my sister, follows the amigurumi method, but, made correctly, should stand at about a metre tall. I don’t know if it’s simply because the yarn required is super chunky or not – even made in DK yarn he stands at just over a foot. Not exactly tiddly.

I’d offered my sister a choice of crochet gifts for her birthday, and she chose Hugo. M found the pattern. We’d gone into Hobbycraft for me to enlarge my stash, and he’d become bored and wandered off. He came back with a road-kill fox rug pattern which was fortunately knitted, so I sent him away again. I don’t knit. Then he came running back with Hugo, who is a Knitcraft pattern.

Looking at the pattern, it wanted 10 balls of super chunky and 2 kgs of toy stuffing. But I thought a metre tall would be a bit much, since he would have to travel to London, where my sister lives. So I made him in WI Soft & Chunky Merino/Acrylic in Cream instead, which used only 3.5 balls, and required less than a kilo of stuffing. He still ended up at about two feet tall.

It was an easy sort of pattern, mostly just going round and round in double-crochets. The only point when I had trouble was when he became a bit large and unwieldy to stay on my lap, and he had to stand on the floor and I had to move.

M said he looked like a dinosaur without the ears and tail, so I made another in a blue/green DK cotton yarn from my stash.