Fantasia was one of my favorite Disney movies growing up. I absolutely loved the ballet sections, with the dancing hippos, the Russian mushrooms, and best of all, the colorful centaurs in love! This hippo is an ode to this film.

I’m making a purple hippo, which seems appropriate, somehow, though I’m using slightly bigger needles because there is just no way that I am in the mood to fight with size 1s during the holidays.

The hippo’s snout needs to be more “hippo-like” and less round like a pig’s, so I’m adding some increases and decreases to the head in an attempt to amend that. Note: The designer has added my mods to his pattern!

First off, it’s important to know that the cast-on area is where the neck of the hippo is located. I followed the pattern until Row 3, where, instead of knitting a full inch-long tube, I only knit half an inch of St st with 24 stitches total. That is the hippo’s head, which is smaller than the snout.

For the snout, I first decreased six times, twice on each needle, by k2tog at the beginning and end of each needle. 18 stitch remain. In the very next row, I increased six times, kfb at the beginning and end of each needle, which gave me 24 stitches total. Then I repeated that increase in the next row. With 30 stitches total, I knit for 3/4 of an inch. Then I followed the decrease instructions as normal.

I just made the mouth, eyes and ears and my hippo is looking sooo cute!

Instead of having a separate head and body, I’m simply picking up six stitches around the open neck hole and start casting on the body from there. Actually, I picked up and knit the six stitches, and then pulled everything really tight. In the next row I moved up to ten stitches using the handy-dandy kfb stitch. Then I starting following the pattern again for the body.

I did the feet differently than the pattern called for, stuffing the insides of the I-cord with a wee bit of that fake stuffing (which I stole from my mother). The other feet are probably better, but I find I-cord to be exceedingly boring and annoying, so I mainly just wanted to get this little hippo finished. Her feet now make her look like she is plie-ing. Hehe.

I found a bit of tulle and I’m stitching it around her waist so that she really will be a hippo in a tutu. Love it! She was named Hippolyta by Kirky’s family.