the biggest project

 I didn't finish a lot of things over break. This is the single biggest one, and it was sort of a last-minute choice - on Wednesday the 17th of December, before going to the train station, I stopped in Farmersville for a trip to Yarn and You.

And they had a whole wall of little balls of Sirdar chenille yarn, and little books of soft toys to make with it. Sort of an Assemble Your Own Kit thing. There was one book called something like Fanciful Animals with a couple mythological ones (unicorn, phoenix) and three real ones (a llama, a narwhal, and an okapi)

Now, okapi are among my favorite animals because they're so odd - they are the closest living relatives to giraffes despite looking more like a cross between a zebra and a deer (though when you see video of them - and a couple zoos do have it online - you can see that they move kind of like a very small giraffe would). So I decided to splurge on the yarn and booklet of patterns. (I didn't buy the optional fifth color - a rose read, to do pink cheeks on the okapi, I didn't want to spend that much more money to use a few inches of yarn) 

Also, chenille is not my favorite yarn ever to work with, but crocheting it is a lot easier than knitting it (it tends to "worm" when you knit it, with loose stitches and all). And these animals are crocheted. 

It came out much larger than I expected; I was picturing one of the little 5"-6" amigurumi things, this guy is nearly a foot long

 

And yeah, "guy." I was toying with naming him Louise (I watched a lot of Bob's Burgers reruns over break) but then I remembered that only boy okapi have the little horns (the girls have tufts of hair) so maybe I call him Oliver instead. 

The chenille yarn is nicer than many (it's denser and is close to a DK weight) and it does work up into a velvety fabric

 I did use lock washer eyes, which you install on the eye patches (made separately and sewn on at the end) and I wound up lightly stuffing the patches because the posts on the lock washer eyes - which were what the pattern recommend - made them stick out, but it makes him look a little odd in front view. I might later try to do a little needle sculpting with floss to pull them in more so he doesn't have bulgy eye patches)

 Other than that, I kept the expression neutral. I experimented with scraps of the leftover black and tried to see if eyebrows were necessary but I decided they weren't.