WIP Wednesday: A Truly Granny-Tastic Project!

So, everyone else out there in the crochet/knitting blogosphere has been making weekly posts for months now called WIP (work in progress) Wednesdays. It's all coordinated through Tami's Amis' blog and you can see everyone else's WIPs too :) I've finally decided to join in the fun and try to do these as often as I can.

While I never lack WIPs, this week I started a very cool one that I think may take a little while, but I'm excited to show a bit now :) It all began with a Hippo. I saw this pattern made up by one of my Ravelry friends and was instantly in love. I had to make it for myself! My lovely little sister was nice enough to give me the pattern for my birthday, so I am now officially making my very own Happypotamus! Yay!

This is a new type of crochet for me as the whole animal is made up of Granny Squares. Now if you learned crochet the normal way, Granny Squares seem to be the first thing you make. They are easy and you get your bearings on several different stitches in the process. Well, I learned by making a baby hat, so I kind of skipped the whole Granny Square period. I've tried out a few just for the heck of it over the last year, but always go back to making animals and never get very far with them. Well, no more!

To get myself started on the right foot with my Happypotamus, I decided to make up a larger Granny Square with the pattern - I just used worsted weight yarn like I normally do. And I ended up with this:

The pattern is an African Flower Hexagon and it's big enough that I will use this as a pot rest (I hate to waste yarn!) Once I felt comfortable with the pattern on the bigger yarn and hook, I switched to the smaller size for the pattern. I'm using 4 colors of Baby Bee Sweet Delight yarn - it's like a sport weight - for this project and a (dun dun DUN!) 2.25mm crochet hook! This is the smallest hook from my pack I've ever used, no lie. Even with my mini slugs, the smallest I used was a D hook (3.25mm), so this is a new experience. It took some fanagling, but I finally got the hang of it. The pattern is made up of these flowers with different numbers of petals  which creates the shaping of the animal. Even in the sinus-infection-cloud my brain was in this weekend, I was still able to make a handful of pieces:

These are my flowers and they will be joined with a gray colored yarn to make them into a hippo :) I can't wait! I have another 40 or so pieces to make (holy cow!) so I know it will take a while, but I love this pattern so much I'm sure I will try to hash it out as quickly as possible.

So, if you want to see other WIPs around the blog world, go here and check it out!