Let me start this off by saying that I get unreasonably excited when people bring me things from far away. So, when I saw a Handmade Ornament Swap hostessed by a lovely blogger down under, I jumped in with both feet. I didn’t dive, mind you. That’s a good way to hit your head.

Our swap hostess is Christina Lowry and here is what I was inspired to knit.

I met Anna at Vogue Knitting last January and fell completely under the spell of her mini gnomes. This is technically my second gnome. The first one had a pretty serious mishap with his pants where his legs were joined together so, he was frogged in a hurry. And this one doesn’t look nearly as good as Anna’s on the cover of the book, but as Bones said to me, “um, that’s probably her 900th gnome”.

After making the second gnome, I asked Lisa for feedback and she said: “WHAT is he stuffed with?”
me: “um, white yarn. It’s what I had.”
her: “well, that’s my first bit of feedback.”
I bought some polyfill on my way home.


Gnome the Third does look a bit more tidy.
moral of the story: What’s on the inside is important, just as Mom always said.

Ps. Here’s a link if you’d like to see what other folks are making.

Tags: Anna Hrachovec, Christina Lowry, gnome, mini gnome, ornament

The nice thing about November here is that we still have blooming flowers. We also still have biting gnats. food for thought.

In light of the fact that I do not have any Chrysanthemums to take pictures of these in, Sydney and I traipsed around our hood looking for photo ops. First, we found a stump.



Then, a “ladder” that I would not trust with my weight, but that seemed plenty strong enough to hold a pair of socks.


…and then we found the barrel cacti. I’m not much for prickly pears, but we have a few barrel cacti that have charmed me. I’m always pleased when there’s a new one in the bunch.


These socks require concentration. I wouldn’t recommend knitting them while operating heavy machinery, but they are totally worth it. This is another lovely pattern from Hunter Hammersen and I’m very pleased with it in spite of the pain that I went through with the picot edging. In the end, I figured it out and now I feel like a bona fide knitting genius (I just learned that bona fide is two words, so clearly, not a real genius, but a knitting genius nonetheless).
Mine raveled here

Ps. These were the socks I wanted to finish for Socktoberfest. I was only a bit late.
Pps. Check out what others have finished at Tami’s Amis and Wisdom begins in Wonder and Natural Suburbia

Tags: Chrysanthemum socks, hunter hammersen, knit, socks, socktoberfest