All Gnomed Out

Today is my little sister's birthday!  I've had her birthday present planned for months.  I found this pattern  one day on one of my favorite blogs, Tangled Happy, and knew I had to make some of these cute little gnomes for her.  She collects gnomes.  I don't want to inundate her with them, though, so I decided to wait for her birthday to make them. 

I finished one before we left for our trip, so he got to do a photo shoot in my very weedy flower bed.



The other one I mostly made during our camping trip, but I didn't bring any stuffing.  So he's just a shell of a gnome.  =)



They work up super quick.  As I made the second one, I was thinking of ways to modify the pattern to change the size and shape of them a little, for variety.  After the girls caught sight of the gnomes, they insisted on gnomes of their own, so for their gnomes, I experimented so they each had a unique
gnome.



For the tall gnome, I just added an extra round in between increase rows. 



For the short gnome, I took out some of the rounds in between the increase rows, except for the face... I didn't want to lose any room for a face.  The girls agreed he looked too cute without a beard, so he became the baby.



For the all pink gnome, I tried working it from the bottom up, as one piece, instead of making the cone and bottom separate.  I am not sure I'd do it that way again... working the pointy hat is easier from the top down and the bottom isn't as defined.  I also ran out of eyes, so I had to embroider a face on it.  I made her the Momma-gnome, seeing as how Zoe insisted that she be all pink.  She was actually angry that it's not totally pink, but I explained to her that she needed a face, so she relented.



They are mostly filled with fiberfill, but to make sure they would stand up, I put some beans in the bottom of them.  Zoe saw me adding the black beans to the baby gnome and said, "Momma, are you putting his poops in?"  Crazy kid.

Anyway, this afternoon, we had a top secret mission to sneak over to my sister's house (she just lives down the road from us) and left her gnomes and a mushroom birthday card on her front step for her to find when she got home from work.  Somehow I didn't notice that her car was already there, she had gone home sick from work, so she didn't discover them - my brother-in-law did.  So my surprise didn't work out quite as planned, but she loved them and that's all that matters.



I think I'm about done with gnomes for a while.  I like gnomes and all... we even have one that roams around our front yard.  Seriously, the girls move him every time they go out there.  But 5 gnomes in less than a week is enough for now.  =)