Pingu, possibly
I did suggest posing the as yet unnamed penguin in the snow but this was totally unacceptable to the junior penguin owner who offered to hold him in front of the window instead. It came out well in the end, I set off with no idea about how I was going to do the head but when I got to it I made it as simple as it could be and that was good enough. There was quite a bit of the skein of black Cascade 220 left, the white was yet another skein of the miserable woollen practise yarn last used for the brain hat. The orange was the leftovers of the white yarn dyed, I was snowed in ten miles from my dyes so I used a combination of procion dye in yellow, Supercook red food dye and some vinegar. The colour didn’t fall off when I fulled it which proves that it was a winning combination.
The feet were originally much wider and were just plain wrong looking, once one segment at each side was folded under the shape was about right. This is based on the shell pattern from the ends of the Peaks Island hooded scarf, I’d imagined it being more pointy but once felted it didn’t want to block out that much. The feet and beak were sewn on by my mother while I was frantically knitting flippers before the school run in a desperate attempt to avoid having to explain why the penguin wasn’t finished. I’d frittered my time away shovelling snow and packing away Christmas decorations when I should have been knitting. Mummies shouldn’t promise what they can’t deliver.
I went for a three button fastening, the side flaps are a continuation of the fronts and will be useful if we ever need to take the hot water bottle out. That’s probably overkill and I could have just sewed the shoulders down. I had some concerns that the head wouldn’t go over the neck of the bottle because the opening is mrch wider than the base but that worked out well too. I made the beak separately and sewed it on after felting and did the same with the flippers. The beak looks fine, the flippers look exactly as if they’ve been made separately and stuck on afterwards. The flippers are the one thing that I’d change if I were to make another because they are rather lame.
For the last phase of shrinking I sewed the tabs down with the hot water bottle inside and put the lot in the washer. To get it dry I filled it with hot water and kept turning it on a towel. I’ve mentioned before that if I put something on the floor then I can find a dog sitting on it the next time I turn around, this was no exception.
