Last week, I blogged about an “Elephant Ballerina” I made for a little girl who was moving overseas with her family. Her older sister’s favourite animal is a hedgehog, and Ana Paula Rimoli’s “Amigurumi World” happened to have a pattern for such a unique animal. In fact, the patterns for the Elephant and the Hedgehog can be found on consecutive pages in the book!
Making the hedgehog was fun because it involved using some new amigurumi techniques. First of all, the body shape of the hedgehog was different than the typical round ball shapes I’ve grown accustomed to making for the teddy bears and bunnies. I also crocheted a round muzzle and sewed it onto the body.
Once I closed up the head, I attached cute mouse-like ears and then arms to the body. At this point, the hedgehog reminded me of the “Naked Mole Rat” from Kim Possible 🙂
Next came the new part: crocheting on the prickly coat. This was quite the process, but I love how it came out so bumpy and textured.
I find this series of pictures from the front view hilarious! Hedgehog goes from being bald, to having thick sideburns, to having a mullet!
This is what Hedgehog ended up looking like with the completed prickly coat extending further down the face. Deciding where to begin and end each row of the prickly coat required some discernment (e.g. curving upwards around the arm and around each ear along the sides). At first, I crocheted the prickly coat straight across the forehead, but the hedgehog appeared angry and too manly (after all, I was trying to make this hedgehog a girl!). And so, I undid my work and this time crocheted curving upwards in the middle, giving her a softer look. Much cuter now!
Since her younger sister’s Elephant Ballerina had a flower in her hair, I made sure to give this hedgehog a flower as well! The older sister’s favourite colour is actually chartreuse (once again, their vocabulary is extensive!), but I had no chartreuse yarn. Her second favourite colour is magenta, so I used the same colour as the Elephant’s tutu for the flower.
Here she is all ready to give you a hug!
She looks pretty cute with her arms tucked in too.
And one more picture with some pops of colour 🙂
This is how we packaged the Elephant Ballerina and the Hedgehog for the two sisters:
And here is what the two look like together:
The older sister immediately named the Hedgehog “Chuckla” (such a unique name!) when we presented it to her. Over the weekend, the older sister came up to me and told me that she uses hair scrunchies to give her hedgehog a tutu (in order to match Elephant Ballerina’s tutu). I thought this was such a clever idea since it would be removable (I didn’t want to crochet a permanent tutu around Hedgehog given her prickly coat). Thus, I crocheted around an elastic band (first two rows of single crochets, then {Ch 3, Sc} in each Sc around for third row) using the same fuscia colour. Now, she can wear this in her own hair or use it as Hedgehog’s tutu. Needless to say, she was delighted when I gave this to her!
I don’t have any pictures of Hedgehog wearing the tutu, but hopefully it looks alright! Their parents told us that the girls sleep with their amigurumi stuffies every night. It warms my heart to know that something I made with so much love is being dearly loved in return 🙂
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