My brother and his wife (they got married last weekend!) recently moved into their new house and, as a housewarming present, I offered to make them a set of gnomes! They both picked their favourite gnome from my copy of The Gnomes of Grimblewood and, so, I set about making them their very own versions of Gnicole (the cabled gnome) and Gnatalia (the colourwork gnome).

Gnicole is a self-proclaimed instant noodle connoisseur and maintains that spicier noodles are always better. While the curly, ramen-style noodles are her favourite, she does also enjoy some nice spaghetti. In fact, she always carries a stash of dried spaghetti with her, under her hat, in case of emergencies (hence why her hat is so outrageously tall). Of course, she stole that idea from Paddington, but she doesn’t think he’ll mind: imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.

Gnatalia loves ballroom dancing: she very much enjoys a classic waltz, but her favourite dance is the tango, because she likes the drama. Because she only has feet (no knees), she can’t dance the Argentine tango, which is a source of great sadness to her. Unfortunately, Gnicole is too top-heavy (as a result of her spaghetti-stuffed hat) to be a suitable dance partner, so Gnatalia is in the market for a someone new (her first choice is Anton Du Beke, but she is willing to settle for someone else if necessary).

Table of Contents

• Yarn Choices
• Thoughts on the Patterns/Gnome-Making Process
  • Gnatalia
  • Gnicole
• Changes/Adaptations
• Final Thoughts

Yarn Choices

As with all of the gnomes in my Year of Gnomes undertaking, I made both of these gnomes using leftover fingering weight yarn that I had already had on hand. In general, I tried to stick as closely as possible to the colours in the inspiration photos (both in The Gnomes of Grimblewood book), though, obviously, I did have to make a few changes here and there where I didn’t have exact matches.

Even though the two gnomes are very different from each other, I still wanted them to feel like a set. I opted to use the same colour for both Gnicole‘s hat and one of the accent colours on Gnatalia‘s hat (the brim/horizontal stripe colour). I also gave Gnicole a grey beard (as opposed to a white beard), so that Gnatalia wouldn’t look dirty next to her, with her grey beard and hat. Both gnome designs already had tassels, so I think, along with the colour choices, this version of Gnicole and Gnatalia look like a nice, matching-but-not-too-matchy pair.

Little note here: I’ve never worked with teal yarn before, so I wasn’t expecting this, but MY GOODNESS did my hands look a MESS after knitting Gnicole. The dye on the yarn just seemed determined to get all over me, which did make the experience slightly less enjoyable. Sometimes the dye washed off, sometimes it didn’t, but it definitely turned me off knitting with teal again for the foreseeable future!

Thoughts on the Patterns/Gnome-Making Process

As I’ve mentioned multiple times in my Year of Gnomes series, I absolutely love following Sarah Schira‘s gnome patterns: they’re SO clear and easy to follow and understand, which makes knitting up even the fiddlier parts of the gnomes seem super doable and not at all overwhelming.

This was, however, my first time making both Gnatalia and Gnicole, so I thought I’d share my initial thoughts on those specific patterns here.

Gnatalia

Gnatalia is quite different to the other gnomes I have made: not only does she have the whole folded hat thing going on, she is also a much rounder shape. Furthermore, she has the most complex colourwork I’ve done in a gnome (the only other gnome-based colourwork I’ve tried was Gnolan‘s stripes, which doesn’t really compare at all).

I was dreading the colourwork element of Gnatalia a little bit, but it actually wasn’t too bad! I did end up with a lot of ends to tie off and darn in (though the darning probably wasn’t completely necessary— I could have just left them as stuffing additions), which was sad, but kind of a given with colourwork. My work is pretty neat everywhere except the beginning of the round, where everything gets a little loose and, well, less neat, so that’s definitely something for me to work on next time around.

Weirdly, I was also very nervous about folding over and sewing down the hat, but it was genuinely super simple and easy to do. Yet again, Schira’s instructions make even the overwhelming tasks feel approachable and I am so very grateful for that.

I really enjoyed making the more rounded body shape for Gnatalia, but I did find it a little trickier to stuff than the other gnomes. Gnatalia is quite a stable gnome, so I didn’t find that it was necessary to leave 1/3 of the body for weighted stuffing (I ended up only filling about 1/4 to 1/5 instead).

Gnicole

My first thing to say about Gnicole is that she is MUCH bigger than I expected? I don’t know how, but I was genuinely shocked by the size of her once I’d finished her main body piece. She’s a TALL girl (though, to be honest, it’s mainly hat). Because of her size, there is quite a lot of knitting in her and her hat also features a lot of cables, which adds to the total knitting time too. She wasn’t the most complicated gnome, but she definitely took longer to work up than most of the other gnomes I have made!

This was my first time making a curly beard and I could not, for the life of me, visualise how it was going to work. In the end, I just trusted the process, went for it and got to witness it just, well, happen (I find that’s usually the way with knitting). I love the effect of the curly beard, but I do think the shape of it is a little off— mine just feels a bit wider/more trapezoid-y than ones in the photos? More on that later.

Similarly to Gnatalia, I found stuffing Gnicole quite challenging. The pattern warns you that her hat is super stretchy, so you need to be careful not to over-stuff it. I tried my best, but I still feel she’s a little bit over-stuffed, though this could also be because the brim of the hat is quite tight and pulls Gnicole in where her hat meets her body.

Changes/Adaptations

For Gnicole, I followed the pattern pretty much exactly. The only slight change I made was that I blocked the tassel of the hat, because it was looking pretty limp and sparse when I first made it. Blocking worked wonders though: the tassel looks much thicker and all-round prettier now, so I’ll definitely be carrying that technique forward in my gnome making journey! In fact, I was able to carry it forward almost immediately, because Gnatalia also has a tassel, so it worked out well.

As I mentioned, I’m not 100% happy with Gnicole‘s beard. It’s quite… unruly at the edges— the outer ‘curls’ have a tendency to stick upwards and outwards, which kind of overwhelms Gnicole‘s little body. I folded the outer sections of the beard under the rest of it, then used the arms to hold it in gently in place, and I much prefer it that way. Perhaps next time I’ll try making the beard slightly less wide? But it would still stick out, surely, so I’m not sure…

For Gnatalia, I made two, small changes: firstly, I added feet, which the original pattern does not include, but the worsted weight sample (which I was basing my Gnatalia on) does. The feet are a bit fiddly to make, but they’re so cute and I haven’t made any since Gnorri (my very first gnome!), so I thought it was about time to make some more.

The second change I made was also a result of trying to mimic the style of the worsted weight sample as much as possible: for Chart 2, I used Yarn A in the place of Yarn B (and vice versa). It’s just a little alteration, but I’m pretty sure it’s what’s done in the sample, so I did it too.

I think, if I were making Gnatalia again (maybe even any gnome, given my problems with Gnicole too?), I’d use a stretchier cast-on for the brim of her hat. I’ve been struggling with the brim being too tight on my most recent gnomes and I think a stretchier cast-on would help with that.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m super happy with how Gnicole and Gnatalia turned out and I think they’ll make the perfect Gnomewarming gift for my brother and his wife. I didn’t experiment too much with the colour choices for these two, because I wanted these gnomes to be pretty accurate representations of the ones in the book. Both of these gnomes felt quite different to the gnomes I’ve already made, so it was fun to branch out a little bit and introduce some new techniques to my gnome arsenal.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my Gnomewarming project! I’ll be back next month with 2 (!!) more instalments of my Year of Gnomes series (April and May), so stay tuned for that!

If you're interested...

You can buy The Gnomes of Grimblewood on Amazon here.

You can find the pattern for Gnicole the Cabled Gnome on Ravelry here.

You can find the pattern for Gnatalia the Colourwork Gnome on Ravelry here.

You can find my Ravelry project page for Gnomewarming here. 

Gemma

xxx