Little Pig, Little Pig

The fat little sheep was a big hit for Christmas. I’m following that up with a fat little pig. In all fairness, the pig isn’t that little but that I am sure the kids won’t mind.

This is the beginning of the pig. It is mostly knitted in one piece. I knitted it on one long circular needle instead of straight needles. Most of my projects are knitted in the round and it felt a bit weird knitting back and forth, again.

Hope you all like plaid jammies! 🙂

I have a couple of stitch markers to remind me when to increase. Is it just me or does it look like I’m knitting a bra in the picture above? I’ve got to revisit my photography lessons.

Here’s the pig…er…skin? I sewed up the pig except for the hole at its hind end. I’m leaving that open for stuffing. This project was a god send to get rid of some supplies I still had on hand from other toy projects. It takes an eternity to use up a single bag of fiberfill.

Goodness! Stuffing this pig was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do ever. I stuffed this pig, removed the stuffing, and stuffed again, three times. That was a BIG negative for this project. I prefer toys knitted in the round because I can stuff the thing and shape it as I continue to knit. This thing gets stuffed all at once and it can get quite lumpy. I had to seem up the ham more than once, too. I was so annoyed with the stuffing problem I got a little sloppy on the final seem and hated when I was done. I ripped it out a did it again the next day. I’m just realizing it took me about one happy afternoon to knit the pig body and several days of frustration to stuff the thing and sew it shut.

I prefer to make toys that have very few sew-on parts. I don’t like seeing the sewn edge and these tend to be the first things to fall off of the toy. It is totally worth it to knit on all toy parts. Placing this tail was considerably easy. I simply picked up to legs of the stitch centered between on the lower back of the pig and knitted a two stitch i-cord until I was satisfied.

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Here’s the finished tail. Too cute. Next, I started on the ears. End the end, I made the first ear twice. I picked up four stitches the first time and the ear was way to small and at the wrong angle on the pig’s head. I decided to look at pictures of real pigs to get the placement right. I ripped out the original ear and picked up 6 stitches (right leg of 6 stitches) in line with the front of the leg. I knitted the ears for a few rows until they were nice and floppy and then decreased to a couple of stitches.