If you follow me on Pinterest, you might have noticed when I pinned an adorable Blue Sky Alpacas kit featuring adorable baby animals of Africa! I loved the Lisette Lion (normally all the lions you see are male and have manes- she is a proper little lady lion!), and first saw it on the Blue Sky Alpacas website. At the time, they weren’t yet launched but they have since been rolled out to several knitting stores and are also now available online here, here, here, and here. I was fortunate enough to receive a kit. And holy smokes, it’s got to be the most impressively designed kit I’ve seen so far:
There’s a lot to be said for having toy pattern packaged up as a kit, since whenever I knit toys, they are the things that most require additional materials that you might not have on hand- stuffing, safety eyes, etc. I love knitting toys so at this stage I have a range of safety eyes and stuffing kicking around, but if you don’t normally knit toys, this is a very thorough kit. And the instructions are pretty impressive, too- there directions for both knitting it flat and in the round.
I’m crazy in love with the royal alpaca yarn, though. I’m actually a little disappointed I’m knitting a toy with such glorious softness, when really I want to knit myself a full bodysuit from this yarn and then finally be warm all throughout winter. But then I wouldn’t get to play with it in the summer, like I am now. So I suppose knitting an adorable little lion with it is also pretty damn wonderful.
I bet you are wondering what these little critters will look like, all knitted up. The full Royal Petites Menagerie is here:
Top row, from left to right: Marcel the monkey, Emilie the elephant, and Lisette the lion.
Bottom row, from left to right: Georgitte the giraffe, Rene the Rhino, and Hector the hippo.
I’m almost done making my little lion, soon she’ll be all stuffed and ready for her photo shoot! I’m super excited, and so is Lila- she’s taken a real interest in my yarn and knitting lately, and I think she only needs to be a little bit older before I can teach her to knit and then enslave her into my knitting world have a little knitting buddy! I think next year when she turns 4 she might be ready. Has anyone had any success teaching a 4-year-old to knit?
