Effey the Heffalump and Jeff the Giraffe

I am getting quite addicted to the african flower motif animals by Heidi Bears.

For Effey I used Stylecraft DK: cream, jaffa, aspen and yellow.  I used a size 3mm hook.

I made her with her trunk curled upwards as I think they look nicer like that.  She is for my youngest daughter's birthday in May.

For Jeff the Giraffe, again another Heidi Bears pattern, I used Stylecraft DK: cream, turquoise, shrimp and spring green.  I used a size 2.5 hook.  I really enjoyed making Jeff as it was a little more than just making the motifs and assembling.  You had the ears, horns and mane to do. I think he looked rather handsome!  He was made for my eldest daughter's birthday in May (also). She will be 19 - never too old for a soft toy.  Here are a selection of photos of Jeff:

Ellie and Jeff

Ellie and Jeff

Holiday with Happypotamus

I was wondering what I could take on holiday with me to crochet, when someone who had seen my Happypotamus (see June's African Flower Motif Hippo blog) asked me if I could make her one.  Great, I thought.....I can make the motifs on holiday and assemble it when I get home; doesn't take up much room and only 4 balls of wool.

The lady chose her colours: purple, off white, dark dusky pink and a light mixed fleck pink.  So on the days that we decided to chill out, I sat outside and did some crocheting.

Excuse the hair, it went a bit lank that day :-)

We had a lovely holiday on a campsite in France.  While I was crocheting a young lad in the next caravan saw me and came over and asked what I was doing.  So I showed him how I was doing the stitches and explained that I had to make all the flower motifs and then stitched them together to make a hippo.  At this point I showed him the photos that I had taken on my previous hippo.  He was amazed and had to go and tell his parents, who then had to come and have a look as well.

I came home with pile of motifs: 

This time I decided not to do any of the ends until I had done all the rounds and it made for a much neater finish.  I was much happier with the stitches.  I had read that someone in one of the crochet groups I belong to, saves all the ends and then uses them to stuff toys that she makes.  I thought this was a good and idea and it is amazing how many ends you have at the end of a project. 

Here is the finished Happypotamus: 21" long by 8.5" tall.

I have another week in France, different region, in a couple of weeks, so will have to think of another holiday project.

Holiday hippo (as he was called) was safely delivered to his new owner and given the name, Humphrey.  I am very pleased that  he has gone to a good home and will be cherished.

Just before he went off, I received my new labels which I ordered from 'gblabels'.  I am very pleased with them.....fast and efficient service which is more than can be said for Woven Labels who managed to get my order wrong twice.

African Flower Motif Hippo

I am starting to have more work-in-progresses than I have actual finished pieces!!

Today a friend and I decided to start a crochet-along to celebrate the end of our current courses.  So we have decided to have a go at the Happypotamus design by Heidi Bears.  I am using Stylecraft yarn: plum, meadow and fiesta; James Brett baby vanilla. I am using a 3mm hook.

It is a mixture of different shaped african flowers....it is amazing what she has produced......so imaginative.

Today we managed to do 6 shapes...only another 38 to go; it should keep us out of mischief for awhile.  Although we live 100 miles apart, we can still have a good laugh via facebook messenger and send pics of how we're getting on, or showing how to do something if we're a little confused.  Unfortunately it does prove how difficult it is to count to 7 as we're not fully concentrating on what we're doing and so there has been a fair bit of frogging going on.  All part of the fun though.

Here are 2 of the shapes we did today:

Pentagon flower (top) and Hexagon flower

A friend has come up with a very good suggestion, so I shall be playing around with that soon and see how it looks before I say what it is.

It's a lovely pattern and I admired it some months ago but it was far too advanced for me and I was rather scared by it.  However, the only new stitch was a long treble crochet, which now I am more confident, didn't phase me at all!  It is really amazing how fast you progress with crochet.

Today we did some more pentagons; we need 26!!! I also did a heptagon:

Heptagon

Didn't get much done today :-(.   I did a lot of centre pieces ready for tomorrow and the nose square; something is better than nothing I suppose

Nose square

Seems a little bare without the long treble stitches.

Another terribly non-productive day......well when the weather is behaving, it is a good idea to do some gardening.  Today I did a couple more pentagons and an octagon.

Octagon

I have hit the half way mark: 17 pentagons, 1 octagon, 2 heptagons, 1 hexagon and a nose patch.  I have got plenty of darning in of ends to do but it is very satisfying seeing the pile of motifs getting bigger.  Would you like a peek?  Oh all right then :-)

I can't wait to see this in its final form.  I'm thinking of turning it into a doorstop for the lounge....the colours will go perfectly there.

After so long all the motifs were made....they were overflowing out of my little tin.

Now came the tricky bit......assembly time.  It was a bit of a challenge.  I decided to sew mine together as I couldn't get to grips with Heidi's 'join as you go' method, however, I think it probably is worth persevering and mastering it (I shall do this next time).  Yes, even though I was starting to get bored with making all the motifs, there will be a next time.

I'm not going to say exactly how he was put together as you can see for yourself by clicking on the 'happypotamus' link above.

Ok I will show a little bit:  first came his legs, and what lovely little legs they were :-)

one leg

Once I got the hang of it, he grew quite quickly:

As I had decided to make him into a doorstop, before I filled the body with toy stuffing (and boy did he eat some stuffing - well I don't suppose they get to that size on nothing), I filled some sandwich bags with about 2 tablespoons of play sand and tied the tops securely.  I put a bit of stuffing in and then the sandbags and then more stuffing around them so that you couldn't feel the bags and then continued to fill his body.

Sewing the head on was quite a performance; he needed locking into place....my legs came in handy here, whilst sewing and he needed to manipulated a lot but it was very exciting as he was nearly complete.  The last motif was in place and hurrah, only the ears to do - only to find that my last 2 shapes had to have the last round frogged and redone as it wasn't to be completed like the others..........it would have been useful to have mentioned this at the beginning as is was a little demoralising to have to pull work apart at this late stage.   Never mind, they were done and stitched in place.  But something was missing.......something was anatomically wrong with this hippo......as lovely and splendid as he was........that's right, no tail.  Well I couldn't leave him like that so I fashioned him a lovely tail, after having looked at lots of images of hippo's tails on the internet. I made a teardrop shape and stitched the pointy end together and stuffed it as much as I could.  I left the fatter end open and put some stuffing in there and sewed it onto his bottom.  Oh and I added some hairs as some of them have a bit of a hairy tail :-)

Drum roll.............and now I would like to introduce you to CLAUDIUS!