Giant Gnome Update: Three Feet Tall

Previously: Project Giant Gnome

The cool thing about knitting a giant gnome is that at some point, you get to knit standing up!

But most of the time I’ve been sitting.

(Thank you Audrey Peck for this photo!)

And now, giant gnome has a body!!

I can now say exactly how tall he is: three feet, four inches (a little over one meter). Pretty big for a gnome!

I’m feeling good about the project right now, but let me tell you, over the past week there were at least two points at which I was very close to ripping out the hat and the face, or the face and the shirt, or the face and the shirt and everything else, and starting all over again. I think I could have done more planning in advance, but there’s also just an unpredictability when working with very large, soft things. Even though all the increases and decreases are uniform, from different angles the gnome can look plump and perfect or cylindrical and not-so-perfect.

My method of judging the progress was to stuff the body and take a photo, then overlay some roughly-drawn shapes to get an idea of what the proportions will look like.

The black area under this guy’s pants is where I cut the pants in Photoshop and nudged them up under the shirt. Because the pants were looking way too tall! But in the end, instead of frogging back to the point where I could make the pants shorter, I took a shortcut and gathered them at the bottom and stitched them in place.

This seems a little like cheating, but I’m OK with it—backtracking at this point would mean less time to make other things for the show, a compromise I don’t want to make right now. (And the reason these stitches are so sloppy is because I’m going to have to undo them to remove the stuffing for shipping anyway.)

It feels like the hard part is over now that the body is finished, but many questions remain: Do I have enough yarn, or do I need to request more? What should I make giant gnome eyes out of? Could I pull off a second giant gnome in time for the show? Is there a treatment for gnome addiction? How about gnome burnout? Check back to find out what happens!

Thanks again to Lion Brand for sponsoring the yarn for this project. And don’t forget to send me your tiny gnomes!!!