WIP Wednesday - Week 50

FINALLY I can show off one of the things I've been working on the most for the past few weeks. BG: ever since I made my first Happy Hippo, Nina exclaimed over it, and mentioned that she had to have one once they got a permanent place of residence again. Well, this summer they moved back to Denmark, so I knew I had to get started on one, but had several other things I wanted to knit her first. Those all got done, and at the start of November I arranged to come visit them weekend before last... that would give me just 3 weeks to make a Happy Hippo for her... would I be able to do it? I looked at the two others I'd made and saw they had taken 2 and 6 weeks respectively, so I figured - yes, I would!

So since then I've been working pretty much exclusively on that (well - that and the owl puffs I made for my colleagues) finishing FRIDAY as I was heading off to visit them Saturday! I was in such a rush that I forgot all about the safety eyes until AFTER the last hexagon had been put in place! Ah well... it's not like Nina's in much danger of pulling them out and swallowing them, so I figured I'd take the risk of not undoing all that stitching ;-)
Fortunately she LOVED it! I'd packed it in my backpack and just let the head peak out, and she literally squealed when she saw it. She had had no idea I was even working on it. Awesome!!! :-D

I also got to hand off Jordan's hat, and fortunately it fit :-)

I'd brought the owl puffs to work with me Friday before last... I felt a bit silly about passing them out to my colleagues, as I didn't really know how they would react, but fortunately they liked them... or at least pretended to while I was around ;-)
I posted this photo on Facebook that evening, and a friend of mine wrote to ask if I'd make some to sell!!! They're fun to make, so I was happy to agree as long as she didn't want too many too soon. In the end she asked for another four by Christmas - that I can manage, and in fact finished the last one yesterday!

With those things out of the way, I have had time to knit some more on existing projects... for the first time in about a MONTH! The Jillian sweater has seen quite a bit of progress, and I'm just about finished with the hip increases.

I've gotten quite a bit more done on the Aranami shawl as the pattern's really easy to learn off by heart, so I tend to bring it along with me when I go out. I'm almost done with the fourth colour :-)

I'm also working on a blanket. I've been wanting a knitted throw for ages, but my cozy memories blanket is still YEARS away from being finished (which is fine!), so I found some cheap yarn and decided to just go for it! In my head I knew exactly what I wanted (a 'sampler afghan' of sorts), but I couldn't find anything quite right on ravelry, and my first attempt turned out a mess, so I'm just going for simple mitered squares again instead :-D At least with all the garter, it'll be nice and squishy!