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

Gnarley the First!

Gnarley the First is a renowned interior designer, best known for her cutting-edge work with throw pillows and cushions. She’s not a big talker, but no other gnome can furnish a tree the way she can. She tries to cultivate a mysterious persona, in order to establish herself as a true ‘artiste’, but her creative idol is Edna Mode and her favourite song is ‘Raspberry Beret’, so make of that what you will...

Table of Contents

• Choosing March’s Gnome
• The Yarn
• Thoughts on the Pattern
• Changes/Adaptations
• Things I Loved!
• Things I Didn’t Quite Love…
• Final Thoughts

Choosing March’s Gnome

After two relatively… pointy gnomes, I was craving a bit of a shape change for this month’s gnome. Gnarley is the only square-hatted gnome in The Gnomes of Grimblewood (the book by Sarah Schira, which contains the patterns for all three of the gnomes I’ve made so far), so he seemed like a good choice! I was also quite excited to try knitting his textured body, which is unlike anything I’d ever knitted before.

The Yarn

For this knitalong, I’m aiming to use up leftover yarn scraps from my mum’s extensive stash (and my own, not quite so extensive stash). While this does mean that I typically won’t be able to identify the specific yarns I’m using, I actually do know what the pink tweed yarn I’ve used here is! It’s Slubby Sock by Ainsworth & Prin, in the shade Mallow. Unfortunately, according to Ravelry, this yarn has been discontinued, which is a shame, because I really liked working with it.

A tweed-y yarn possibly wasn’t the best choice for Gnarley, just because it does obscure the wavy pattern she’s got going on on her body a little bit… You can still see it, but you just have to look a little closer than you would have to with a more basic yarn. I half suspected this going in, but I just really loved the colour and fancied making a pink gnome this month, so I rolled with it anyway.

I wasn’t sure how much yarn Gnarley would use up, because her whole body and hat are made using the same yarn, so I made sure to pick a yarn scrap that I had a good amount of, just in case. I wish I’d weighed it beforehand though, because I don’t think it used as much as I expected! Note to self: start weighing all gnome yarn before gnome-ing.

For Gnarley‘s beard, I really wanted to branch out from the cream colour I used for the past two gnomes, so I decided to use a grey shade, instead. However… I did run into a number of problems with this: Gnarley‘s quite a simple gnome, for one, and the grey shades did leave her looking a little… flat? Also, because the Mallow yarn is quite a deep shade, if I went too dark with the grey Gnarley started looking very ominous and gloomy, which wasn’t quite the vibe I was looking for… Finally, because my other two gnomes have such bright, cream beards, I was a bit worried about Gnarley looking a bit… mucky next to them.

In the end, after many, many, trials of different colours (and even different beard/nose combinations!), I settled on pale, warm-toned grey shade for both the beard and the nose. By herself, Gnarley looks great, but she does look a little drab compared to the other two gnomes in my collection. I’m hoping that, as the year goes on and I make more gnomes with darker/greyer beards, Gnarley will fit right into place!

Thoughts on the Pattern

My love for Sarah Schira’s patterns continues: they’re so clear, concise (without being too brief) and always work up perfectly. This was my first time following the pattern for Gnarley the Wavy Gnome though, so I thought I’d share some more specific thoughts on this pattern in particular.

Overall, I loved making Gnarley. I’d never worked left/right twists before (like, ever!), so this was an entirely new concept to me and, with the help of Schira’s instructions, I slipped right into an easy rhythm with it. Gnarley worked up SO quickly: in part because of the simplicity of the shape (that square hat was a dream after the struggle that was Gnolan‘s hat last month!), but also because there was something strangely addictive about knitting the textured body— there must just be the perfect amount of rows between the increases and the twists, because it really flew off my needles!

Much like with Gnolan, Gnarley has very few additional elements that need to be sewn onto the main body (in fact, Gnarley has even fewer: just a beard and a nose— no arms in sight!), which made knitting her even quicker and easier. Long story short, I had a lot of fun making my Gnarley!

Changes/Adaptations

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m still getting to grips with the whole gnome-making process, so, much like with the previous two gnomes, I opted to keep things simple and follow the pattern for Gnarley to the letter, instead of trying to make any of my own adaptations.

I do think, however, that if I made Gnarley again, I would make the brim on the hat ever so slightly longer, just to help it sit better over the beard/nose, and differentiate between the hat and the body a little more. Does this mean I’m finally building up the courage to start adding my own little touches to my gnomes?!

Things I Loved!

There are a lot of things I loved about making Gnarley:

• I loved the simplicity of the hat. Both of the previous two gnome hats I have made have been conical (or, at least, vaguely conical), which I love the effect of, but does include a little more shaping and faffery to create. Gnarley’s hat was SO straightforward, making it just felt like a little treat to myself.
• I loved working the twisted stitches. As I mentioned, this is a technique I’ve never used/encountered before, but it was so simple and easy to do, I found myself really enjoying the process!
• I loved the effect of the three-needle bind off on Gnarley‘s hat. I love a three-needle bind off and I think it is just the perfect finish for the top of the square hat!

Things I Didn’t Quite Love…

There were, however, a couple parts of the Gnarley-making process that I wasn’t quite so keen on…

• As I mentioned, I feel like the brim of Gnarley‘s hat is a little too short. This is very possibly due to my stitch-picking up inabilities (more on that in a sec), but I do think I’d consider increasing the length of the rib by 1-2 rows if I made Gnarley again!
• I do not enjoy picking up stitches from 3×3 rib. Why is it so much harder to stay in a straight line?! Not a fun time (but also, why did I find 3×3 rib so much harder to pick up from than the 1×1 rib on Gnorri‘s hat?! I don’t understand…).

Final Thoughts

I loved making Gnarley (especially if we ignore the aforementioned rib-picking-up-struggles)— I definitely think she was the most enjoyable of the three gnomes to make, but I do feel like the other two gnomes (Gnorri and Gnolan), just have a little more presence about them? Gnarley is quite one-dimensional in comparison and, while part of that is my fault for using a tweed yarn and giving her a grey beard/nose, I do think it will take a few more gnomes for her to feel at home in my collection. Truly, though, she was so much fun to make— I can see myself making many more Gnarleys, just for the fun of the process.

So that’s all the intel on Gnarley the First, my March entry for the Year of Gnomes 2025! Next month, I’m planning to follow along with the April mystery gnome, Professor Fungi, so I won’t be posting that one on here until the knitalong has completely finished in May (to preserve the fun of the mystery gnome!). Soooo, there’ll be two instalments of my Year of Gnomes 2025 series in May, and none in April (sad face, but not too sad face because I’m still hoping to get a bit of gnome-ing into the blog next month anyway…!).

If you're interested...

You can buy The Gnomes of Grimblewood on Amazon here.

You can find the pattern for Gnarley the Wavy Gnome on Ravelry here.

You can find my Ravelry project page for Gnarley the First here. 

Gemma

xxx