When I learned that my friends David and Sheril would be having a baby, I decided to make him or her a Joris (pronounced “Yor-is”), which is a pattern I had favorited in Ravelry, by Dutch knitter Annita Wilschut. Joris is a knitted stuffed creature. A plushie. I’m not really sure exactly what kind of creature he is. He has spikes on his head, à la Lisa Simpson, and some cute claws for hands and feet. So he’s almost a dragon — but he has no tail!
Well, I started knitting Joris. But I got distracted by other projects, and my job and life, and so it took a little while to finish. Sheril and David had a boy, and named him Atlas. And then finally last November, when Atlas was nine months old, I finished Joris and sent him on his way.
For the body, I used some Noro rainbow wool yarn. In fact, his whole body is wool, so I decided to include some lavender from my mom’s garden inside, along with the stuffing, to keep moths from eating Joris. His eyes are embroidered so that they won’t fall off and become a choke hazard. I made a mistake on Joris’ head though, because his horns aren’t as spiky as they are in the example photos. But that’s okay. He’s understated.
It was fun packaging up Joris and sending him to Atlas, but even more awesome was when Sheril sent me this video of Atlas meeting Joris for the first time. Looks like they’re going to be buddies!
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