I don’t always mend my knitting, but when I do, it’s because it has a face… like this adorable little hippo lovey that had a run-in with an equally adorable mini Aussie.
As I said, I don’t always mend my knitting. I have a little darning loom for mending socks, but it works by weaving a little patch over the hole, and this stuffie required one of those magic invisible mending jobs that Alexandra Brinck makes look so easy over on Instagram. I almost said no, but I knitted this for my bestie’s little girl and she was so sad that I agreed to perform a little stuffie surgery.
The head was pretty easy to repair – I just knitted a new ear and re-embroidered the nostril. The hand was the tricky part. I used the Swiss Darning technique, where you use thread to create vertical lines, and then you fill them in with duplicate stitches. It’s not nearly as straightforward as Ms. Brinck would have you believe, but I managed to do it. It’s a little messy, but I hear that chicks dig scars.
I even made him a little hospital bracelet to wear when I shipped him back home.
Here’s the graphic I made if you want to make a little stuffed animal hospital bracelet of your own (and here it is on a printable pdf with a few size options). I filled out the name with a pen and “laminated” it with a layer of packing tape. After cutting the whole thing out, I trimmed it to the appropriate length, and closed it with a metal brad, which, in retrospect, was a stupid idea since I was giving it to a toddler. Tape would have been a more appropriate closure method… luckily, her mom had my back.
Anyway, here is our happy hippo, brought back to life! Enjoy!
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