First time using safety joints. Got them on etsy from BrendasOLBoutique. The challenge was getting the top of body cast on stitches cinched tightly enough to make a small hole for the joint pin. I failed so the head placement is slightly off center and I had to do a thing. (It was also tough on the arms and legs. I pulled the yarn until I thought it might break but could not get the hole as small as Sarah shows in the video.

I used 15mm eyes. I had placed 12mm on there and they looked beady on her large face.

I watched all of the knitables videos on YouTube and the question that was never answered was where the joint pin for the head goes. If you follow Sarah’s instructions for how to do it on the dog then the hippos head will be sitting all wrong - too far backward, so after some expirimenting and consulting with my husband who is an acupuncturist we decided where the spinal cord might naturally be on a hippo. I have included pics of my placement.

Another challenge is that her nose tends to buckle at the top (notice some people’s projects have it) so I stuffed it really tight and still had to reach up and put more stuffing in the top bit. With so much stuffing needed my stitches began to stretch out a bit in key places (end of nice and inner edge of eyes) so I actually went back in after stuffing and did some stitches on top of the other ones to cover up the gaps where I could see stuffing.