I've recently been inspired by the spring-like weather to start some smaller, household-type items. It's getting too hot for sweaters and heavy boot socks, and I'm moving towards my lighter-weight scarves instead of my chunky cowls. All-in-all, it's the right season to start home projects.
As a knitter (but I guess more as a biologist) I find I often miss out on making satisfactory knit stuffies. The lack of freedom in stitch placement can make it difficult to freehand a complex and anatomically correct animal shape, and using DPNs for in-the-round knitting is fine until you get smaller than about 16 sts around. This problem is actually one of the reasons I decided to learn crochet on the side; amigurumi is so popular because it's easy, fun, quick, and lends itself well to spur of the moment freehand projects.
Unfortunately, I'm not the biggest fan of the way crochet stitches look, and tend to keep my main projects to doilies (although I've been dying to try a
Lalylala doll!). So, I'm left torn between the dissatisfaction of less than perfect patterns in knitting or crocheting for stuffies. Don't get me wrong - there are knitters who have managed to perfect the art of stuffie knitting... Who could forget the amazing
stuffed sea turtle that showed up on Reddit's
/r/knitting that actually had some people thinking it was a real animal!
Aren't those endangered?! Put it back!
However, I think I'm going to need some more practice before I can churn anything like that out, so I'm stuck with a more simple style for my animals. This hedgehog project should be perfect, and I'd seen similar ones popping up from other sites, like
The Purl Bee. Sweet, charming, and simple, it's a great shape for stuffie beginners and knits up quickly because of its small size.
To start out, I struggled between starting at the front end of the hedgehog or the back. The back would likely be an increasing disc, then once I hit my desired circumference I could knit the tube body and finish with decreases for the face. I've always found that I prefer shaping with decreasing than increasing, as I'm a little picky about the direction of my stitches and find I can more easy experiment when going bigger to smaller.
In the end, however, and after realizing that a hedgehog face is actually flattened a little bit, and that the snout is slightly tab-shaped. It looks a little bit like when I make a toe-up sock and accidentally knit too many rounds to get my cast-on stitches set....
And I thought, hey, I can do that. So I did. Update photos to follow!
