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The pattern: Fiber Trends #228, Huggable Hedgehogs
Yarn used in Hedgehog 2.0: Cascade 220 color 9401 (ecru and light gray tweed – body) and 8400 (charcoal gray – feet), Funny Lux Pelsgarn by SandnesGarn in color 1090 (i.e. fun fur from the discount bin – back).
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February 12, 2006: Stuffed Hedgehog: the killer app for short rows
On Friday, Yarn Harlot’s blog alerted me to the existence of the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival taking place in Tacoma. Saturday morning, I headed down there with Knitting Sensei to check out the fiber market (which was free, and open to the public, unlike the classes, which cost a great deal of money, and were all full at any rate).
Digression: it’s been unseasonably warm recently, and the infamous Tacoma Aroma was running high. Out-of-town knitters: it’s just Tacoma, I swear. The rest of our fair state smells MUCH better, promise!
There was a lot of fiber there, although the Unusual Fiber Award has to go to the Camel Booth. Nomad Yarns from Mongolia imports hand-spun mini-skeins of yarn, and each one’s band was hand-labelled with the name of the camel herder who had spun the yarn, as well as the herder’s home town in Mongolia. I was suprised at how soft it felt (I don’t think of camels as being very cuddly), but not particularly surprised by how expensive it was.
I was getting uncomfortable, and crowded, and a little bit unhappy and sensory-overloaded as we made a second circuit through the trade room. Also, I was keenly feeling my wallet, which, if my life was a cartoon, when I opened it, a little puff of dust and a moth would fly out. Why did the amazingly cool fiber market have to take place three days BEFORE payday? Why? WHYYY???? KHAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!
Wait. What? Where was I? Oh. So we’re standing at this booth, longingly fingering some insanely expensive, and amazingly beautiful, yarn which I would probably never buy even if it was past payday, because $30 is too much to pay for one skein of yarn, people. I glanced over at Acorn Street Shop’s booth, and saw a winsome little face peering at me happily. A stuffed hedgehog face.
Words cannot explain how appealing this stuffed hedgehog was. I shuffled over and picked it up to examine it. I turned it over and felt it – fun fur on the back, a thick felted wool tummy, approximately the size and shape of a basketball, and filled with just the right amount of squishy stuffing. Its adorableness quotient was through the roof.
This is where I may possibly have crossed the line. I hugged it. Like, really hard. And for a length of time which may, from the outside, have come across as unseemly. The woman manning the booth drifted over and said something (I wasn’t really listening), and kind of had a look in her eye like maybe she thought I was a little bit insane, or possibly retarded, or maybe both.
I sheepishly put the hedgehog back, and saw that they were selling hedgehog kits. Everythng you need to make your own stuffed hedgehog, for the low low price of $30 plus tax. Err… okay… then I spotted the pattern, which they were selling solo. “How much?” I asked. “Five something something,” she said (again, I wasn’t really listening, I was still transfixed by the hedgehog).
I picked up the pattern and looked it over. Two sheets of paper, double-sided, densely filled with abbreviations. It looked insanely complicated. NASA complicated. Physics professor complicated. Sequencing the human genome complicated. You get the idea.
“Short rows,” I mumbled, reading the introductory paragraph. It dimly occurred to me that, never having even attempted a short row, this might not be the pattern for me. Frankly, I didn’t care how hard the pattern was. I did. Not. Care. However hard it was, I would do it. Whatever techniques it required, I would learn them. I had to have the hedgehog. I was smitten, there’s no better way to say it.
You’ll be hearing a lot about the hedgehog in the days and weeks to come. The pattern is from Fiber Trends, and having spent many hours working it later that night, it is the best pattern I have ever met. Pattern 228, Huggable Hedgehogs, available at a yarn store near you. Not for sale online, but trust me, the trip to the store will be worth it. Or, if you’re in the greater Seattle area (by which I mean Tacoma), stop by the Tacoma Sheraton and pick you up some hedgehog-y goodness, if you can get there Sunday before they close.
(Lest you think I have gone completely ’round the bend with Teh Cute, I think the pattern could definitely be adapted to produce an adorably squishy stuffed Cthulhu, which I will most likely attempt once I’ve had my fill of hedgehogseses.)
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February 13, 2006: Stuffed Hedgehog
Working the Fiber Trends stuffed hedgehog pattern is a treat. This pattern is so good that it taught me how to do short rows. The instructions are clear and concise, and arcane abbreviations (like “w&t”) are explained in detail at the beginning of the pattern.
I decided to start off by going through the entire pattern once with a test yarn. Sort of like a very complicated swatch. Now that I’m halfway through, I wish I had started off using a real hedgehog-colored yarn, because it’s actually turning out very nicely.
I had planned to throw away the first hedgehog I made, but he would actually be good enough to keep, if he wasn’t knit in that hideous blue yarn. It probably helps that the felting process will camoflauge any but the most egregious errors.
My favorite aspect of the pattern is that about every other line contains a checksum. These alternate between the number of stitches you should have on the needles, and whether the right side or wrong side is facing. This not only allows me to catch errors before they get out of hand, but is also very reassuring. I like the validation of knowing that yes, I have done it correctly. It’s an ego placebo, but don’t discount its effectiveness!
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February 15, 2006: Half a hedgehog is better than none
The swatch hedgehog is about half completed. I took advantage of a brief sunbreak to get some natural light pictures, since the dark blue yarn doesn’t show up well under indoor lighting.
Here’s a better view of the front. Keep in mind that he’s going to be felted, which means that he will get much shorter. His finished face will therefore be more cute, and less cow-like.
Next, a side view, which shows off some of the short-row shaping. If it helps you make visual sense of the picture, I have my hand inside his head.
This is probably my only chance to examine the shaping on the back, since the backs of subsequent hedgehogs will be knit with a row of fun fur as a carry-along. I’m glad I’m knitting this first one in plain yarn, so that I can see what’s happening.
I didn’t really mean to make a hedgehog in Seahawks colors. It just sort of worked out that way, since the blue and green happen to be the least appealing yarn colors in my stash, and I ran out of the blue last night.
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February 18, 2006: Testhog
The test hedgehog is complete! As you can see, it didn’t felt very well, because I knit it too tightly.
Here he is from the side, mugshot-style.
And here he is looking wistfully out at the big wide world.
The real one will be about three times larger, in hedgehog-y colors, with fun fur for the back.
Here’s an interesting question: if you had finally finished your testhog, would you be able to resist throwing it straight into the washer to felt it? Of course not!
But what if the pattern required you to block the testhog by packing it full of stuffing before it was dry, to set the shape correctly? And say you didn’t happen to have a bag of stuffing just sitting around your apartment? And you couldn’t go buy one, because it happened to be two in the morning?
Would you shrug, pick up your least favorite throw pillow (the one with the yellow and white stripes, from a brief and ill-advised foray into a French Provincial color theme), slice it open with a pair of scissors, tear out half the stuffing, and cram it into your testhog?
Oh good, me too! Glad to know I’m not the only one. (I never really liked that throw pillow, anyway.)
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March 6, 2006: Hedgehog 2.0, the beginning
Hedgehog 2.0 has begun! The front is knit in Cascade wool 220, color #9401 which I picked up at Acorn Street Shop here in Seattle.
I have to say, I love the Cascade 220 line of yarn, because it comes in like 20 different shades of gray. (How great is that?) I do kind of wish that you didn’t actually have to buy an entire 220 yards of it at a time, though. It seems like an awful lot to buy of any given color, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for it.
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March 31, 2006: Hedgehog 2.0 – complete!
Yea, even though I snapped at an innocent bystander for no good reason because I was trying to count AND knit with fun fur at the same time, Hedgehog 2.0 is finished!
I was very pleased to find small, matching, silvery-gray buttons in my giant button stash (eBay purchase, naturally) to use for his eyes and nose.
By the way, I always hear people carping about bad patterns – and I appreciate the warnings, I really do! I’ve done more than my share of carping, myself. But just to balance things out, karmically speaking, I want to give a special shout out to Fiber Trends’ pattern 228, Huggable Hedgehogs. That is the best pattern ever. So clear! So reassuring! So well-written! Best of all: only like 3 inches of seaming! Here’s how good the pattern is: it taught me how to do short-row shaping. (Now THAT’S a good pattern!)
Comments (27)
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I found the pattern available on line at WEBS. Wanting to know more about it, I found your blog. Wow, great, but i cannot knit! How is the fur made? I guess I’ll have to come back to see.
L
Comment by Leslie —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:20 pm
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For the “real” hedgehog, you knit the back with 1 strand of wool yarn, and 1 strand of novelty fun fur.
You should learn to knit, it’s really fun!
Comment by Erika —
March 7, 2006 @ 7:45 pm
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So cute! I want to make one! I tried to buy the pattern the other day at Weaving Works and got the snarkiest clerk ever.
Comment by Patti —
March 19, 2006 @ 1:06 am
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I don’t think yarn store employees realize how often they drive their erstwhile customers to the internets to order yarn. They’re almost as bad as comic shop guys, for snark and “master of my tiny tiny domain” snootiness.
Maybe if they didn’t go out of their way to actively belittle and repel their customers, they wouldn’t be getting so much hurt put on them by internet retailers. Unfortunately, the good stores (with, like, customer service) are the ones who lose out in the end.
Comment by Erika —
March 19, 2006 @ 3:26 am
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It’s not all yarn stores…. just Acorn. The people at Village Yarn & Tea and Weaving Works are much more friendly!
Comment by Vanessa —
March 28, 2006 @ 7:30 pm
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I really, really love your hedgehog. I really really hope the Yarn Garden in Annapolis has the pattern and the appropriate yarn so I can add it to my “I really need to learn to knit and make these wonderful items” basket!
I crochet like a fiend… but haven’t mastered the pointed needles yet!
Comment by Kathleen —
April 5, 2006 @ 7:34 pm
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How Cute. I saw him made up in my local yarn store this weekend and thought of you *G*. I’m not into toys, but he’s just darling.
Comment by Karla (threadbndr) —
April 10, 2006 @ 5:28 am
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Beautiful pictures and commentary on the Hedgehog! It made it a whole lot easier to explain the construction to my Mom (whose first language is Japanese). Thanks so much.
KK
Comment by Karen Kitagawa —
July 2, 2006 @ 12:34 am
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Thanks, Karen! Glad I could help – the construction puzzled me at first, too, which is partly why I took soo many pictures. I was trying to wrap my head around it myself, the first time though!
Comment by Erika —
July 2, 2006 @ 1:36 am
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Hi! Your blog is great! I was so inspired I am in the process of making my own hedgehog. I finished the front in one day but I can’t seem to follow the switch from knitting around the back to knitting in short rows. How do you know where to start the first set of short rows?
Thanks,
KC
Comment by KC —
August 1, 2006 @ 11:42 am
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KC, glad you were able to solve the mystery before I had a chance to get home and check the pattern myself! This is one of those situations where you just have to Trust the Pattern.
Trusting the Pattern is not my strong suit, but by the time I got to that particular point, I was in full-on Dummy Mode. I probably would have carefully un-knit and re-skein the entire thing at that point, if the pattern had said so.
Comment by Erika —
August 1, 2006 @ 11:00 pm
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Thank goodness I found you! I am so confused by how to sew his little hind legs and I don’t know why. It just says to sew the ‘short seam’ but to what?? From your delightful furrless photos it looks like the ten-row flap is turned down and sewn to the original cast-on row? It never even occured to me on my own pathetic musings so I don’t trust myself one bit…I never have problems with patterns so this has me really baffled. (We lost our pinto hedgie, Latte, to a virus last summer, so I’m making my daughter a purple hedgie for her birthday. Heather Cascade 220 in lavender and Crystal Palace Tingle in purple. Hee!)
Comment by Ember —
August 3, 2006 @ 7:22 am
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Hi Ember, sorry to hear about Latte!
I don’t have any pictures of the “short seam” because it’s a little graphic, hee! I still have my hairless hedgie, so I’ll post pics of the “short seam” tonight after I get home from work.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you basically squeeze his butt cheeks together, then sew along the crotch and butt crack. I don’t THINK the original cast-on stitches are involved – I think you’re just sewing up the short rowed butt – but I’m not 100% sure about that.
Comment by Erika —
August 3, 2006 @ 7:41 am
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Oooh, Erika! I figured it out. You thought I meant the final seam, but I meant the tube of the leg before you start with the fur. I went ahead and closed the legs like I thought I should from your photos and I am totally adoring how his purple-n-white quills are knitting up in the back. I really lucked into my yarns for this little guy. Thanks so much for your testhog pics! (I think it looks like an adorable faceless platypus (: )
Comment by Ember —
August 3, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
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Ah, okay – my mistake! Glad you got it figured out!
Comment by Erika —
August 3, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
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Yay! I bought this pattern after completing my first knitting class, and I was afraid to jump in. Now I know it can be done! Hedgehogs unite!
Comment by patita —
August 8, 2006 @ 10:07 am
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Hi! I found your post via Google. I just started the hedgehog this weekend (after doing 3 of Fiber Trends’ sheep – another great pattern!), and I am trying to decide what yarn to use for the fur.
I did a test swatch with Moda Dea ChiChi last night, but I didn’t really like how it turned out. Did your hedgehog seem a little bare when you knit him up, or was the fur already pretty dense before the felting? I can’t tell how much thicker it’ll become just due to pulling together more as the wool felts.
Thanks!
Comment by Melibabe —
August 9, 2006 @ 5:44 am
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Melibabe – it will look a little weird and sparse before felting! You might try felting your swatch, to see how it turns out with your particular yarn combination, but I think it will probably look fine.
Comment by Erika —
August 9, 2006 @ 1:31 pm
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Thanks for the reply. I’ve done a series of test swatches and posted on my journal, if you have time to weigh in with a decision there.
Comment by Melibabe —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:17 am
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Hi again! Just wanted to let you know that I finished my first hedgehog. Post and pics are at my new blog: http://zombiesheepexperiment.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
Comment by Melibabe —
August 25, 2006 @ 6:43 am
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Hello! I have had this pattern ever since it arrived at the yarn shop I worked at and I was unpacking the patterns to price. Needless to say I was the 1st customer. I haven’t had the time to try it out yet but after reading your blog I am definitely going to get going on that. Ps…knitting is very worthwhile to learn!!!
Comment by Jennifer —
November 3, 2006 @ 12:17 am
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Splendid!
Hello, I am French and I adore your hedgehogs
Can you help me to carry out these pretty hedgehogs louse my grandchildren
how to have the explanations in French to knit these hedgehogs
Thank you very much for your assistance
Comment by JEANTIN Josette —
November 10, 2006 @ 4:34 am
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Love your hedgehog. Sadly I cannot find anyone who does pay pal payments or who will trade beyond US borders, So I miss out.
Comment by Faye —
July 4, 2007 @ 1:10 am
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I saw some hedgehogs at a local knit shop and went to Google to find a pattern. I loved your writing–it was hilarious! I love the part where you rip open your pillows. ANYway, I’ll be sure to try this pattern out after I knit some fingerless gloves.
Comment by Justin —
October 3, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
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This is probably a really stupid question, but how in the world do you mark the right side? I’m fairly new to knitting and I don’t really know what this means. Thanks for the help.
Comment by Stephanie —
January 25, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
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No problem! It’s not like you can be expected to know everything, right?!
I usually mark the right side with a stitch marker. If you have the fancy kind that are shaped like an O with a tail, you can just slip that into one of the garter-stitch rows on the right side. If you have the cheap kind that are just thin plastic rings, you can make a cut with a pair of scissors, and do the same thing. If you don’t have either, or you can’t be bothered to find them, you can use a contrasting piece of yarn. Really anything will work, as long as it dangles on the right side.
The best way I can think of to describe it is, pretend like the garter stitch ridge is an earlobe, and you’re attaching a hoop earring. (Does that even make sense?)
Comment by Erika —
January 26, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
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[...] Three years ago I knit a Fiber Trends Huggable Hedgehog which I named Hank. Hank was super cute, but really, what are you going to do with a stuffed hedgehog? [...]
Pingback by Redshirt Knitting » Poor Hank! —
December 17, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
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