If you’ve been over to my Facebook page recently you might have read about the new design competition over at amigurumipatterns.net. This year’s competition is ‘parent and baby animals’. You can imagine how a theme like that just ups the amigurumi cuteness factor to stratospheric levels!

Everyone seems to be mad about penguins at the moment, and I have to confess, I’m no exception. So, inspired by the idea of a father and son combination I got myself busy designing and hooking up these two characters – Papa Penguin and Baby Pierre.

Papa Penguin is such a loving and conscientious father and will do anything to protect his new son. Mama Penguin happily goes off for a few weeks to feed on fish and build her strength back up after the exhausting effort of creating and laying such a fine large egg. She feels safe in the knowledge that Papa will be doing a great job of hatching and looking after their precious baby until she gets back.

But as dedicated to fatherhood as Papa is, no-one said being a first time parent was going to be easy! Baby Pierre cried a lot when he was first hatched. It seemed he just didn’t like the cold very much at all and was always trying to hitch a ride on Papas feet or whining to be picked up and carried. As his little chick grew bigger and became too heavy to carry, Papa had the brilliant idea of building a snug buggy from Pierre’s old egg shell. Pierre calls it his ‘snuggy’ and I think you can see how happy he is with his new present!

And now Papa’s got his flippers free again. It’s a good job too because once Pierre’s friends saw him being pushed around in such fine style they all wanted a snuggy of their own. Papa’s been inundated with requests from all the other daddy penguins and has got quite a queue of orders building up already. Well, I’m not surprised, it does look very comfy in there and those antarctic winds can be fearsomely chilly!

Here’s Papa in his workshop busy making up his first order while Pierre and his friends argue about whose turn it is to sit in the buggy!

Pierre is growing up fast though, as chicks do, and is finally beginning to get used to the antarctic weather. These days you might even find him happily making snowballs and skating on the ice with his playmates from the nursery. Even a penguin who’s so prone to cold feet wants to join in the fun sometimes!

But he still loves to have a good snuggle in his re-purposed eggshell at the end of a busy day.

When he outgrows it he’s going to put it by until he has chicks of his own to care for. Then he can tell them the tale of their clever grandpapa’s invention of the very first penguin pram!