Little Cotton Rabbits

a prickle of hedgehogs

The half term holiday has come and gone and what a wet and windy week it was too, starting off as it did with the St Jude's day storm. We woke at dawn on the Monday to feel the house vibrating with the force of the winds and just in time to hear and see a huge branch snap from the very large willow tree next to the house. Amazingly there was no damage (apart from the poor tree itself) so we were lucky.

This week we've returned to welcome term time routines again and I've been really drawn to hedgehog knitting. In fact I've found myself just a little obsessed with trying to make the biggest one possible. I normally make them in the second from smallest size here but have got out my fattest needles and some super bulky yarn.

 

All of these are made from my little oddment hedgehog pattern the only difference is the needle size and type of yarn (Details about yarns used are listed below)

 

 

I do think it would be rather fun to make and even more humongous hedgehog as a footstool / pouffe but have not yet managed to track down any thicker wool. Roving has been suggested but I've not yet found any that would suit. Still the largest chap so far is rather useful as a doorstop (I stuffed him with a stocking full of rice surrounded by toy stuffing so he has a nice weight to him).

 

 

I always think of hedgehogs when the leaves start falling and especially around Bonfire night. We regularly have hedgehogs around in our garden, though whether Herbert is still among them is probably unlikely given the hazards that hedgehogs encounter each day. We don't often see them but we sometimes hear them. They take the food that we leave out and often leave a little hedgehog calling card (hedgehog poo is quite distinctive!). We also have a hedgehog house under a bush in our garden and a hedgehog hole in our fence so that they can get in and out of the garden easily.

Sadly, our poor native hedgehogs are in decline and really need all the help they can get. I've registered as a Hedgehog Champion over on Hedgehog Street, it's a nice thing to involve children with and there's a great pack that they send out which gives plenty of advice and ideas of how to help. If you're a fan of our sweetest native mammal please come and join.

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Yarns and needle sizes for hedgehogs in the topmost pictures above:

From largest to smallest:

1. 10mm needles with Bergere de France Chambery yarn for the body and 6mm needles with Katia Peru yarn held double for the face and feet. 26cm long

2. 8mm needles with J C Brett Rustic yarn for the body and 4mm needles with Katia Peru yarn for the face and feet. 18cm long

3. 8mm needles with Bergere de France Highlands yarn for the body and 4mm needles with Katia Peru yarn for the face and feet. 18cm long

4. 6mm needles with Rowan Drift yarn for the body and 3.25mm needles with Rowan Tweed Aran yarn for the face and feet. 15cm long

5. 3mm needles with Rowan tweed DK yarn for the body and 2.75mm needles with Rowan Felted Tweed DK yarn for the face and feet. 9cm long

6. 2.75mm needles with Rowan Fine Tweed yarn for the body and 2.25mm needles with Rowan Fine Tweed yarn for the face and feet. 6cm long

hedgehogs

At last I have a picture of the hedgehogs in our garden!

OK, so I cheated - but the truth is that I feel really mean blasting the real ones with the camera flash while they're eating!

So here are the knitted hodgers that I made over the weekend. I'm still playing around with shaping but am hoping to write up this hedgehog pattern to share very soon.

Can you tell what it is yet?

I've been meaning to start on one of these for a long time now and then all of a sudden last week I was seized by a badgery moment! I still have to work out the ears and how to integrate a grey body but at least I have the head shaping done!

In other news, we had a great time at the special needs club. Toby settled very well and made a beeline for a big crate of duplo lego. I managed to get him to explore a little too and he coped ok with quite high noise levels. I feel fairly confident that he'll be ok there and the staff are great so I've booked him in from September to go regularly. It will be great as this will give H and I a few precious hours to spend with just Amy. Thanks for all of your good wishes - they obviously worked!

In hedgehoggy news things aren't so great although there is a happy ending! The babies came out again in the hot sun of saturday afternoon (obviously very hungry) and so I scooped them up and popped them in the cool garage with lots of mashed up food and water. After the children were in bed I checked on them with the plan of releasing them again but unfortunately while looking them over to check there were no fly eggs (maggots will eat a hedgehog alive!) I found that they were absolutely covered in ticks. The smallest one in particular had over 40 of them all around her eyes, ears and bottom. This amount of ticks would probably cause death in such a small hedgehog and certain would cause infection, anaemia and severe fatigue so I knew I couldn't cope with them and they needed help. Luckily Epping Forest Hedgehog rescue is only a 40 minute drive and they agreed to take them in. Amy and I set off very slowly in the car on Sunday morning and delivered the hoglets. They were immediately de-ticked, fed, housed and dosed up with antibiotics so hopefully they will all survive. They were 2 girls and a boy of 4-5 weeks old and we are looking forward to a phone call in 5 weeks or so to let us know that we can collect them and release them back into the garden - so I'll keep you posted! Having chatted to the experts there it seems unlikely that Herbert Hogwart would have been the parent (being him/herself only a late baby from last year) so he/she may still be around - there are certainly quite a few hedgehogs that visit our garden each night but it's hard to tell them apart. Maybe I should have knitted Herbert some socks or a scarf to help him stand out from the crowd?!

breaking news from the garden!

Today Toby had an inset day from school and so I spent most of the day in the garden with him. Just before lunchtime as I was pegging out some washing a movement on the lawn caught my eye and sauntering towards me was a very small baby hedgehog. Of course being a seasoned blogger I dropped the pegs and ran for my camera but when I dashed back outside I couldn't see him. Hedgehogs are quite noisy creatures though, so it wasn't hard to track him down

Now I know from all of my research when we rescued Herbert Hogwart last year that hedgehogs only come out in the day under extreme circumstances (illness, hunger etc) so I knew something was wrong. I grabbed my gardening gloves and an old crate and got him settled in the garage with some water and mashed kitten food. The plan was to keep him safe until dark and let him go again.

But an hour or so later there was more rustling from the flowerbed and I discovered he wasn't an only hoglet - there were another 2 emerging from the hedgehog house. So are these the offspring of Herbert Hogwart? Well, your guess is as good as mine but they certainly could be. And is this proof that Herbert was in fact Sherbert? Well, the evidence looks that way!

I fed them all and watched them snuffle around in the undergrowth.

Then, one by one they made their way back to bed. A couple of hours later I gently lifted the lid on the house and they were curled up together fast asleep.

There may not be a happy ending though. They shouldn't have been out in the day and there was no sign of a mummy hedgehog (what has happened to Herbert/Sherbert?) . I phoned the Hedgehog Preservation Society who are so helpful with advice and the plan of action is to leave the babies, put down food after dark tonight, watch them tomorrow and if they come out in the day time I'll be taking on surrogate mum duties again - housing them in the garage in an old rabbit run and fattening them them up to around 400gms before setting them free again!

There are a few more photos over on flickr.

news from the garden

Well the arrival of spring might mean that Toby is happier naked but it seems he's not the only one feeling a bit frisky!

It's been a while since I mentioned little Herbert/Sherbert Hogwart here and so I've been stalking around the garden at night with my camera. Please forgive the quality of the pics - I'm clearly no wildlife photographer, but I did manage to capture some clear evidence that Herbert/Sherbert has a girl/boyfriend!

They've been trundling round the garden together for the last few nights. Is it just a childish infatuation (afterall Herbert is not yet a year old) or could we be hearing the patter of tiny feet come autumn? I will keep you posted!

Our garden (although it is only a medium sized suburban one) is quite a haven for wildlife this year. We're regularly visited by grey squirrels and all manner of birds. We have blackbirds, robins and sparrows nesting and this year we even have a great-tit family in our nestbox. They hatched last sunday and now the parents are frenetically trying to stuff as many grubs and caterpillars into those little gaping beaks!

I love the arrival of spring and that nature is out there, doing it's thing. Hope you enjoy your patch this weekend!