Happy Hippos!

During the end of the summer last year I discovered the Happypotamas crochet pattern by Heidi Bears and fell in love with the idea of making my own Happy Hippo. I bought the pattern and was quickly overwhelmed by the amount of hexagons and pentagons that were needed, but I picked up my hook-n-yarn and decided I was going to crochet on! I tried out some different color combinations, but found it difficult to get it just right and so I had to put my Happypotamus pattern away for awhile. Sad, I know... But as it happens I have a beautiful niece who is a talented little dancer and for their final number in her Christmas recital they danced to Gayla Peevey's version of "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" and guess who wanted a happy hippo of her own. So I raced back to my pattern and pumped out all the many hexagons and pentagons I needed and then came the daunting task of putting them all together. Even though the directions were well written, I still managed to put them together wrong a couple of times and had to take it apart. After rereading the directions I finally got it all put together, stuffed, added eyes and put in a box just hours before it was time for her to open it..
Whew! Talk about last minute gifts. :)

My hippo is very large; she almost took up the whole table!

My niece riding her Happy Hippo :)

This pattern can be purchased from Heidi Bears' website here. She also gives great tutorials on how to achieve success with the many versions of the african flower motif.