My hippo is knit in  Zweger Garn Opal 4-ply sock yarn, held double. There are currently 361 of these hippos on Ravelry’s project pages. This guy is one-of-a-kind, though.  You have to imagine he’s gotten out of the river and rolled around in the mud, followed by rolling around in leaf litter. And somehow he also got into the mustard.

This is one of the animals in Susan B. Anderson‘s Itty-Bitty series. Hippo is from Itty-Bitty Toys. There’s lots of cute critters sprinkled throughout Anderson’s Itty-Bitty work, which currently includes Itty-Bitty Nursery and Itty-Bitty Hats. She’s left Itty-Bitty land for the moment and has created a kid’s book, with knitted patterns, for the “Spud and Chloe” line of yarn. Those are the “sweet yarns for real life,” with “luxe yarns in mod colors,” that are  “all carefully selected to let you create dreamy pieces” people. I suppose the little girl is the Chloe of the pair, but I prefer to think of her as the Spud half of the duo. Obviously, I haven’t read Susan’s book, otherwise I’d know for sure. Some of the patterns in the new book are cute as a bug’s ear. (That’s a compliment, not an insult.)