Gnew Baby (Gnarley 3 Ways)

If you read my Making a… Babybearsweater post last month, you’ll know that my cousin (fairly) recently became a dad and, because I’m still heavily in my gnome era, I figured I’d make him and his new family a set of decorative gnomes (because why not?).

For obvious reasons, I’m calling this trio: Gnew Baby.

All three of the gnomes in this post were made using the Gnarley pattern from The Gnomes of Grimblewood by Sarah Schira (Imagined Landscapes). In today’s post, I’ll be sharing the yarn/needle details for this project, along with instructions for converting the regular Gnarley pattern into a tiny, Baby Gnarley. Because the original Gnarley pattern is not mine, I’ve written these instructions in such a way that you need the original pattern to understand it, so you’ll need a copy of The Gnomes of Grimblewood.

You can find the Gnarley pattern on Ravelry here.

Table of Contents

• The Yarn + Needles
• Regular Gnarley
• Slightly Smaller Gnarley
• The Baby Gnarley
• Adapting the Gnarley Pattern to Make it Tiny:
• Final Thoughts

The Yarn + Needles

My mum made a cute little outfit/blanket set for the new baby, using BC Garn Loch Lomond Lace GOTS, in the shades Nougat (04), Sand (19) and Silver (06). I thought it would be nice to use that same yarn to make this gnome trio, so that they matched the blanket!

I used the following colours for the gnomes:

Regular Gnarley: Nougat (hat and body), Silver (beard and nose).

Slightly Smaller Gnarley: Sand (hat and body), Silver (beard and nose).

Baby Gnarley: Nougat and Sand (hat), Nougat (body), Silver (beard and nose).

Obviously this is a lace-weight yarn, which is a little thinner than the suggested fingering-weight yarn from the book, so I did have to change up my needles a little bit (though not as much as you would expect: the yarn does fluff up and fill out a little after blocking, so it wasn’t too much of a problem!). I also made some strategic needle-size decisions to differentiate between the two ‘adult’ Gnarleys, using a slightly smaller needle to make a slightly smaller Gnarley.

Needle sizes used:

Regular Gnarley: 2.25mm for hat, body, beard and nose.

Slightly Smaller Gnarley: 2.00mm for hat, body, beard and nose.

Baby Gnarley: 2.00mm for beard, 2.25mm for hat and body, 2.5mm for nose.

I found the beards/noses were most affected by the thinner yarn, so I didn’t size up my needles for them, as the pattern suggests. I did use a larger needle size for the baby gnome’s nose, to make sure it was big enough proportionally (and because it didn’t need stuffing, so I didn’t have to worry about the stuffing poking out!).

Regular Gnarley

Regular Gnarley was made exactly according to the original Gnarley pattern from The Gnomes of Grimblewood. The only change was that I didn’t go up to the larger needle size when making the beard/nose (because of the slightly thinner yarn) and instead used the 2.25mm needles for every element.

Other than that, Regular Gnarley is exactly what it says on the tin: Regular Gnarley. He’s ever-so-slightly slightly smaller than my Year of Gnomes, March Gnarley, as a result of the thinner yarn.

I used the darkest shade of the yarn (Nougat) for Regular Gnarley‘s hat and body, then the Silver shade for his beard and nose.

Slightly Smaller Gnarley

Slightly Smaller Gnarley is also made according to the original pattern. The only change this time was that I used 2.00mm needles for all of the elements (i.e. sized down a needle AND did not increase the needle size for the beard/nose).

This made Slightly Smaller Gnarley ever so slightly, well, smaller than Regular Gnarley (which I did intentionally, to make the trio look like a nice little family, each member with their own identity!).

I used the medium shade of the yarn (Sand) for Slightly Smaller Gnarley‘s hat and body, then the Silver shade for her beard and nose.

The Baby Gnarley

Onto Baby Gnarley now and this is where things get interesting!

To make Baby Gnarley, I still used the original Gnarley pattern, BUT I scaled it down to make it significantly smaller.

I made Baby Gnarley using a combination of the two hat/body shades that I used for her parents (i.e. Nougat and Sand). To incorporate both, I opted to give Baby Gnarley a striped hat and used plain Nougat for the body. I didn’t want to add stripes to the body, because the texture on Gnarley‘s body is quite subtle, so I didn’t want to overshadow that.

Adapting the Gnarley Pattern to Make it Tiny:

Okay, so here is the part where I try my very best to share all of the adaptations I made to shrink Gnarley down, without sharing Schira’s pattern (and intellectual property!) from the book. To follow this tutorial, then, you will need a copy of The Gnomes of Grimblewood, which you can use in conjunction with these instructions to make your very own Baby Gnarley:

Abbreviations:

st(s) = stitch(es)

k = knit

kfb-M = knit front and back modified (see The Gnomes of Grimblewood book, p.12).

p = purl

PM = place marker

HAT CHANGES (Gnarley, p.44):

• Cast on 24 sts on 2.25mm needles.
• 3 rounds of 2×2 rib for brim.
• Knit 13 rounds for hat.

For stripe pattern: use Sand for brim, then work in 2-round stripes, alternating between Nougat and Sand for remainder of hat. Final stripe (Nougat) will only have one round, so cast off using that colour to even out stripe width.

BODY CHANGES (Gnarley, pp.45-9):

• Knit 1 round only before starting Chart 1.
• Work all of Chart 1 (repeat 4x per round).
• Work all of Chart 2 (repeat 2x per round).
• Next round (Round 25): kfb-M, k13, kfb-M, k13.
• Next round (Round 26): p all.
• Next round (Round 27): (k5, PM) six times.
• Stuff hat with fluffy stuffing and body with weighted stuffing.
• Work decrease/finishing rounds according to pattern, then weave in end.

BEARD CHANGES (Garter-stitch beard, p.22):

• Cast on 6 sts on 2.00mm needles.
• Skip Row 1.
• Work Row 2.
• Work Rows 3 and 4 a total of 3 times (9 sts).
• Work Rows 17 and 18.
• Work Rows 19 and 20 a total of 3 times (6 sts).
• Cast-off.

NOSE CHANGES (p.23):

Instead of making the large nose from book, make the Small Nose using 2.50mm needles.

Final Thoughts

I’m so happy with how this little gnome trio turned out: particularly Baby Gnarley! I think his little striped hat is SO cute— I’m definitely going to try out striping more Gnarley hats in the future.

I was surprised by how big a difference going down 0.25mm in needle size made to the finished size of the gnome: you can really see the size difference between the two adult Gnarleys, as well as the size difference caused by the yarn weight in the centre and right-hand Gnarley (the latter of which was my March gnome!).

Using lace-weight yarn probably did complicate matters unnecessarily, but I just love how this little set matches the blanket my mum made.

I hope you’ve found this post interesting (or helpful, if you’re contemplating making your own Baby Gnarley!). I had SO MUCH fun making this Gnew Baby trio and I think they turned out so cute and fun.

If you're interested...

You can buy The Gnomes of Grimblewood on Amazon here.

You can find the Ravelry pattern page for Gnarley here.

You can visit the Imagined Landscapes website here.

You can find my Ravelry project page for Gnew Baby here.

Gemma

xxx