Healing Hedgehogs: Charlo woman’s cute creations cheer pediatric patients

Marie Bauer calls her handknit hedgehog Spike, and says his favorite food is potatoes. “And he loves dancing,” adds the 4-year-old. “Spikey loves everything!”

“I haven’t met anybody who doesn’t like them,” says hedgehog-maker Lorraine Hosler. Even the Charlo postmistress has one perched on her desk.

For Hosler, that’s the point: “I’m just tickled because they bring so much happiness.”

Her biggest customer is Logan Health Children’s in Kalispell, which received two free shipments last year, totaling 90 of the adorable little critters. After the first shipment of 30, Hosler reached out to Carly Rickard, chief development officer for the hospital, and asked how many more they could use. “As many as you can make,” Rickard replied.

So last fall Hosler sent 60 more and is currently working on another batch.

In 2019, Logan Health Children’s opened a new 190,000-square-foot facility in Kalispell, dedicated entirely to pediatric care. Last year, they treated more than 1,700 patients in-house, including nearly 168 young cancer patients.

The soft, colorful hedgehogs “brighten up each room and delight each kiddo receiving one,” says the hospital’s child life supervisor Amy Rohyans Stewart. “The staff loves giving them out and bringing a little fuzzy sunshine to their patients.”

Hosler was born in Oregon and started knitting when she was 8 years old, making sweaters and socks for friends and family. She eventually moved to Tacoma, Wash., and in 2010 began to sell her felted hats at local farmer’s markets. With encouragement from a friend, Arlee weaver Heather Torgenrud, she added felted hedgehogs and sheep to her repertoire.

Hedgehogs, which she makes in a rainbow of colors, were particularly popular. “I had so much fun,” she says. Customers would ask her to arrange all her creations, just so they could pick the perfect one.

After moving to the Charlo area in 2015, she donated her remaining felted hats to the Montana Cancer Center and the leftover hedgehogs went to Logan Health Children’s in Kalispell.

Rickard responded with “such a wonderful letter,” recalls Hosler. “Her enthusiasm stayed with me and I kept thinking that I needed to make more.”

Eventually, “I got my ducks in order and decided I needed go into production.” First, she altered the pattern so that her creations are smaller than the originals. First she knits the front out of wool, adds the fluffy, polyester quills, then throws the hedgehog body in the washer to turn the wool front into felt. The next step is to add stuffing and sew the eyes and nose.

She estimates that it takes around eight hours to make each hedgehog, not including the time it takes to source and purchase yarn.

She admits that she could be selling the critters. “But for me it’s just a labor of love. I love doing it and I love the kids’ expressions and how taken they are with them. So, that’s my obsession.”

And possibly not her only one. She’s also training a maremma sheepdog, enjoys playing piano, practices yoga, and knits sweaters and scarves for friends. She also describes herself as a “rabid swan lover,” who keeps a close eye on the trumpeters that nest annually on the large pond next to her house. “Harold and Maude” return annually, and their kids often show up too.

“I landed in the right spot,” she says of planting herself in Montana. “Moving here was the best decision I ever made.”

Her hedgehogs each have names, based on their colors: Paisley is light purple; Niabella, dark purple; Quillan, brown; Spike, black and white; Calypso, blue; and Carmelita, caramel-colored.

Carmelita, Quillan and Spike are fashioned with actual hedgehog colors. Of course, recipients are welcome to christen the critters as they please.

She hopes her experience of lighting up the lives of children in need might inspire others who make afghans, stuffed toys or quilts to give a few away. “I’d just like to get people involved in the kids by donating things that make them feel better when they’re in the hospital,” she says.

Her other hope? That someday she gets to see the hospital staff distribute her hedgehogs. “That would give me such delight.”