Mid-length Hip Carries

My first reaction to these is that they involve too much wrap/fiddly-ness to deal with for a hip carry, which I tend to think of as a carry that should be quick and poppable. (If I wasn't planning on the carry being quick and easy up/down, I'd definitely use a front or back carry instead--they are all more comfy for me than any of these.) But at least twice in the past few months, I've ended up with a long wrap, a fussy baby, and a long checkout line, without enough elbow room to put him on my back. In that case, a fairly quick hip carry that uses up a lot of wrap is really useful.

So, I tried Hip Cross Carry, Coolest Hip Cross Carry (i.e., the hip cross carry with a slipknot), Poppins Hip Carry (which, ironically, is not poppable), and Robin's Hip Carry.

First, my new solution to the long wrap/long line problem described above: Robin's Hip Carry. Basically, it's making a ring sling out of a wrap, minus the rings (although you could pre-tie this with a sling ring). It was pretty comfy. I forced myself to try carrying Max on my left hip, which feel totally backward to me for some reason. It wasn't too hard to wrap, even backward, and fairly easy to adjust on the go. I used my 4.5m Vatanai, but could have used a size 4 if I tied under bum. I preferred the feel of the lexi twist and tying in the back. Here's both:

Lexi twist/tied behind.

Tied under bum. Gonna crop my just-rolled-outta-bed hair out of this one.

Now, the worst one: Poppins Hip Carry. This was also majorly unpopular on the COTW thread, so I don't feel too bad. It seems really unnecessarily fussy, for not much extra support. I think it looks weird, too. Here's our attempt:

Now, back to the first two carries we tried, which fell somewhere in the middle as far as usefulness goes. They are both poppable, which seems like a big advantage for a hip carry. Here's the basic hip cross carry. I found it hard to adjust. The inner rail dug the heck out of my neck and was way too tight, while the outer rail sagged. The only way I could think to fix it was to loosen the whole carry and flip the shoulder, a la Simple Hip Carry. It actually worked OK then, but you can see in the back view how loose the rail would've been without the flip.

Much better: The Coolest Hip Cross Carry, which is exactly the same as above, but adjustable with a slipknot. It's really just a hip-located Semi-FCC, which I already mentioned that I love, so this one's a keeper. A big plus is that it's more supportive than a ring sling, which would be my usual go-to carrier for a poppable hip carry.