Elijah

I took these pictures rather hastily while getting ready to visit the real baby Elijah and give him his gift, but I think you can see how he turned out well enough.

Since he was a gift for a teeny wee baby I didn’t want to use safety eyes, although they might look cute on a toy for an older child (or yourself). These are just french knots in navy yarn because I think that black almost always looks to harsh for this sort of thing.

Like most babies he’s fascinated by who the elephant in the glass might be.

Bobbi told me that elephants with the trunk turned up are said to bring good luck, and as I wanted to wish Elijah and his parent’s all the luck possible with their move to Germany so that his sick mama can be well taken care of by her mother, I made sure to turn his trunk up. Good luck Elijah, Juliana and Richard!

Some details:

Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft Baby DK, just over 1 ball.

Needles: 3mm dpns, for some parts I used 4 needles and some parts I used 5 depending on the shape.

Construction: all knit in the round without seams, except for grafting the top of the ears. The most complex shaping is short rows on the ears, but they’re so effective that I didn’t want to leave them out to make the design easier. Short rows really aren’t that challenging anyway and far too useful to ignore / avoid. I found a crochet hook invaluable in helping to pick up stitches, especially when picking them up from already stuffed body parts.

Stuffing:  he’s stuffed with  polyester toy stuffing, because although I love the idea of wool stuffing for toys I wanted him to be pretty washable. I know that pretty much every toy making guide ever tells you to stuff firmly, but I don’t think that really applies to knitted toys. Stuffing carefully with small amounts is certainly important, it’s so much fun to mould the toy into shape while stuffing and he’s nice and squishy.

Design:  I just began with a quick doodle and let him take shape as I went along. I did keep a couple of points in mind though, I wanted him to be nice and round and cuddly but still be easy for little hands to grasp. So his limbs trunk and neck were all designed to be small and easy to hold onto, no doubt he’ll be tugged along by his ears though! Well loved toys are the best kind of all though, so that’s ok.
Pattern: my own, in case you didn’t guess. I don’t think it will be too long before I get this one up for sale, little things like this are so, so much less work than the sweaters. Of course I know that it might be annoying to some of you who have been patiently waiting for some of the sweater patterns to be made available to see me working on littler things, but don’t worry I am working on the big things too. Progress is just much slower.