I am slowly creating an army of dangerously adorable headgehogs....

My plan is to distribute them throughout the country. When my hedgehogs and I have successfully conquered the United States, we'll move onto Canada, and then perhaps the rest of the world. It depends on how fast I can knit.

It's Debbie Radtke's Huggable Hedgehog pattern! These hedgehogs are one of my favorite things to knit (as you can all probably tell). They're amazingly cute, everyone loves them, and they knit up quick and easy.... but not mind numbingly easy.

The large green one was my first attempt, and after that I decided I wanted to make one for just about everyone I know. Making large ones just wasn't practical (the amount of yarn, the amount of stuffing, the amount of time, etc), so I modified the pattern to make them half the size. I was quite surprised when my modified pattern actually worked. I pretty much just split all the numbers in the pattern in half. I was expecting something malformed and disproportioned, and, well, some of them do turn out a little misshapen, but once you felt them all their lumps have thus far smoothed out.

For the small ones I have been dying my own wool - with Kool Aid! It's so much fun. I'm sure dying with real dye is a good time too, but really, it's drink mix, and I'm dying yarn with it! At this point in time I really have no desire to dye with anything else. Not that I would dye yarn for something like a sweater in Kool Aid colors (I'm more of an earth tones kind of girl), hedgehogs just seem to look better in bright, fruity colors - don't you think?
To learn more about how fun it is to dye with Kool Aid, check out this article from knitty.com.

Most of these little guys have been sent off on to their respective residences along the east coast, or will be very soon. The orange one has been sent along to western PA with my good friend Emma to partake in the college life. The purple one has been keeping an eye on my mom's office in Delaware, and the small green one will be traveling to Florida next week to hang out at the beach with my grandmother. The large green one will be staying right here with me, mostly because I he's a lovely leafy color... now is probably a good time to notify you all that green is by far my favorite color.... in fact it's one of my most favorite things ever, but this is another subject entirely....