Praise for a great pattern

Must take a moment to do some bragging about Paola's greatness, especially with regard to communication and excellence in pattern writing and publishing.  I've emailed her twice to ask questions about patterns, once before and once after buying my patterns and both times she has responded to me kindly and especially quickly, within a few hours, I think.  I ordered my patterns on Christmas day and they were in my inbox within just a few hours. Accounting for the holiday I would not have been surprised if they'd been delayed a day or two; if I have a holiday it seems like everyone should!  I am very impressed by the clarity of the instructions, the abundance of project photos in progress and at different angles, and also the ease with which it is all conveyed.  The pdf may be 15 or 20 pages, but I feel the photos tell me a lot that words don't and at times they reveal details about placement and shaping and other concerns that are easily overlooked in other designers' patterns.  I don't think I'm explaining well.

Holy cow!  I just discovered that in the pattern I'm working there's a link to a video tutorial demonstrating how to make the loop stitch AND I think she is using a more movement economical way of rewrapping the yarn in the opposite direction.  Otherwise, it was easy enough to learn this stitch just following along with the photo tutorial in the pattern.

BTW, I have memorized the lyrics to the Llama llama duck song.  It amuses me for reasons I can't or shouldn't explain.  If I understand correctly, the "Not a llama" image displays an alpaca, which looks a lot like a llama, but doesn't have the llama's banana ears.  (You can see what I mean in the next post.  Wasn't planning on it, but occasionally my thoughts fall into linear arrangements.)  That's my conclusion because I've been browsing so very many llama photo rich websites to observe colors and patterns and plan future llama llama projects.  At some point I read that the ears were a major distinguishing feature.

Llama llama in progress

I've completed maybe half the work on my Coquena the Llama llama project having bought llama yarn in two colors and then buying more from additional online retailers after running out. Actually they all tended to have little stock in the colors I wanted.

Now they have nearly all arrived (except for a single hank of Mirasol Miski in Snowdrop #100 that Webs owes me). Miraculously, they all have matching dye lots across all sources - so far anyway.

Referring to the last image: the white starts after I used an entire skein of brown (Mississippi), coffee mug is just for size reference.  And the images show a much earlier than current stage of completion.

I'm calling my first llama llama French Silk since the yarn used (Mirasol Miski in Mississippi and Snowdrop and Elsebeth Lavold Baby Llama in Dark Brown) remind me of the chocolate on chocolate pie with the same name.

Ran into a bit of a snag missing or forgetting part of the instructions to make my coat loop stitches about 2" long.  Noticed it by the time I'd gotten to the tops of the legs where the directive is repeated to make 2" long stitches and emailed Paola to find out why the loops on the tops of the legs where 2".  She very kindly explained that they should be the same length as on the body and that the body instructions call for the same size loop.  I'm so glad I asked!  I'm going to redo the top of the one leg that had loops so far and make them match the loop size I used on the body.  French Silk has been more recently sheared than Coquena, that's all.

Was going to hold off posting until I got a few better pics representing current state of progress.  But that's going to make an even BIGGER, more tiring post by the time I'd get around to finishing it, so I've changed my mind (well, obviously!).


This would make more sense if I hadn't deleted references to struggling with trying to match the eye highlights and reworking over and over.  On my next try, which could be the 7th or 11th I'm going to use a single strand, although the right one I'm trying to match was done in a double strand.  Seems that with a single strand and maybe twice as many passes I'll have more control over how it turns out.  You can see what I mean about the longer leg loops anyway.