Tatting my final hippo

Had another go at tatting a realistic hippo face and am reasonably satisfied with this one, a huge improvement on yesterdays attempt. I am so grateful to Jane for letting me play around with her designs like I do, it is doing so much for my design skills which were nonexistent..



The thread this time was Flora 10 as it is the only size that I ever got this glorious colourway. he measures a whopping 15cm (almost 6inches) and for those who like to know how much thread to use, he took 6m on Sh1 and 5.5m on Sh2.

I am now happy that he can go into the water and do his 'hippo paddle' and have his ear, eye and nostrils out of the water (see my hippo photos in my last post).

Just had to play with my Tanzanian scene again so here are 2 hippos, one swimming and the other wading in the shallows.



If you want to see hippos on the water and on land here is a super link to a U Tube video.

The number of hippos that have come out of the Tat It And See project has been amazing. Lots of people thought that it might be a rhino or pig or even an elephant and felt that they were all very similar and related to each other. I thought that maybe a teeny little zoology lesson might come in handy here (apologies for being a know it all!!) as they are evolutionarly very different. If you are allergic to the science bit then skip the next bit!

Hippos and Rhinos are both cloven hoofed animals that walk on their toes(digits)Digitigrade. So it was not so silly to imagine a hippo ballerina as she is already walking on her toes!

Hippos walk on two toes and are Artiodactyls. Other artiodacts are pigs,camels,giraffes and cattle, goats and sheep. Some walk on 2 toes others 4 but all walk on an even number of toes.

Rhinos on the other hand are Perissodactyls and are odd toed, usually walking on the middle toes of each foot. they are usually fast runners (remember that when you meet a rhino) and include as well as rhinos the tapirs, horses, zebras and asses.

Elephants are a totally different ball game, they appear to walk like us on the soles of their feet with their toes pointing forward Plantigrade. But in fact they are still walking on their toes ( no hooves on these tho)with a lot of padding to bring the sole of the foot to the same level as the toes. The foot sort of tilted forward, this is called Semi Digitigrade. Elephants walk they don't run but they do walk at a pretty fast pace.

Rant over you can breathe again!!

More about elephants when I tat them..that's a threat!!