Gnoodles the Gnome #1 - 9 January 2025

That’s my work in progress side by side to the gnome I'm aiming to replicate and that goes by the name of Gnoodles. This gnome’s backstory is a bit confusing to me. I’ll just quote one line from the book on page 28 :

A visit to the local bookshop changed Gnoodles’ life when a book about Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley caught her eye.

That possessive pronoun there, her, refers to Gnoodles so 'she' must identify as a female then. This caught my eye because all the photos show Gnoodles with a beard. I don’t mind what people identify as but that surprised me a bit. I decided to knit a pink hat for my version of Gnoodles.

I used a DK (double knitting) yarn for the hat but using my 2.25mm dpns (double pointed knitting needles) to give the hat some sturdiness. In hindsight I feel this was a bit of a mistake because it makes the hat a bit stiff but I decided to stick with my original decision on account of the yarn colour.

Compared with the hat of the Gnome I invented and wrote about here and here, both hats have a similar number of stitches (not the same but similar). This means that the resulting Gnome should also be a similar size.

Reading and following reliable instructions unlike the AI effort I wrote about here is like breath of fresh air; I knew what I was knitting would work. I did deviate a bit though. I noticed towards the end that my hat point would not be that pointy (for some reason) so I decided to add three more rows to the instructions given in the book.

I’m happy with the result that you can see above. After that I need to pick up stitches for the body. I’m contemplating deviating from the pattern again to add plaits or a plait instead of a beard to create a female ‘Gnoodles’.

Thank you for reading !