Gnome for the Holidays

Hi. Welcome, everybody, to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda K. B. Anderson, and today, I'm gonna be showing you guys how to make these super cute gnomes.

Aren't they adorable? They're so much fun to make, and they really, I mean, probably most of you already have the materials in your house, at least most of the materials that you're gonna need, 'cause most of it is just scraps of yarn. So first of all, I wanna say I'm so glad you're here, and if there is anything that you would like me to clarify or talk a little bit more about, please ask me questions in, you know, put your question in the chat box so that I can see that I need to go over something a little more. I wanna be clear. And also if you just wanna let me know, like, where you're crocheting from, or you just wanna say hi.

Or another thing that I love when people put things in the chat box is when they tell me what kinds of things they're excited about learning next at the next live. Because I wanna learn how to make the things that you guys wanna make so that I can have some fun lives for you. And actually, speaking of that, this one is dedicated to Cynthia Wolf because she had put a suggestion in the chat box that I had seen for making some holiday toys. So this one's for you and, of course, for all of you, too. Yeah, but I'm so glad you're here, and let's get started talking about making these super cute gnomes.

All right, so first of all, you're gonna wanna download your pattern, Gnome for the Holidays. You can click on the link. It should be in the description or also in the chat box, and that's free for everyone. So you can download that, or if you don't have time right now, you just wanna watch this, you can always go back and download that later. That's no problem.

All right, so you're gonna need your pattern, and you're gonna need a small amount of four different colors of yarn, okay? The largest amount is for the arms and the body and the bottom of the body, those three different pieces. And so that's a ball about this big. All the specifics, exactly how much yarn I used, the exact kind of yarn that I used, the brand, everything, that's all in your pattern download, so you can check that out. But you'll need somewhere around 55 yards of a worsted weight yarn.

And there's a lot of wiggle room here with the worsted weight yarn. I normally like to suggest, when we're making these kind of amigurumi toys, to use a yarn that isn't very splitty because you're gonna be working at a tighter gauge in order to make a stiff fabric. I like to suggest that people use either an acrylic or a wool or acrylic wool blend. A couple of these are wool. These two are mostly wool, but this is a acrylic wool blend for this beard.

And this one is mostly acrylic with a little bit of wool blended in. And you could even use something like cotton would be fine. But if you're newer to crocheting amigurumi, you may find that it's a little bit harder on your hands 'cause it's so inelastic. So that's another reason I like the acrylic and the wool, but that's what I suggest in the pattern. But you know, you can just try something out and see if it's working, too, if you already have something in your stash.

You don't need to run out to the store to buy the yarn specifically for this project, 'cause you probably already have some. All right, so you're gonna need some yarn, four different colors, about 55 yards for the arm's body. Let's see, 40 yards for the hat and mittens, and 25 yards for the beard, and about six yards for the edging and the embroidery. So the edging and embroidery, that's just this extra color that goes around the edge of the hat and then these little snowflake-y kind of bits that are stitched onto the hat. All right, so you'll need some yarn.

You're gonna use a crochet hook, whatever you need to get a firm gauge. You don't wanna see your stuffing showing through once you start stuffing it. So you know, use something a little bit smaller than what you would normally use for the size yarn you're using. So I used an F hook, 3.75 millimeters, and that worked really well for me. And I did actually list the gauge.

If you wanna check your gauge, which you don't have to check your gauge for this project because as long as you're getting a firm fabric, that's really fine. You don't need to worry about it. If you're using a thicker yarn, though, you're gonna end up with a bigger project, or a thinner yarn, you're gonna end up with a smaller project. But that's not really that big a deal. It's still gonna be super adorable.

All right, so for checking your gauge, I just instruct you to make, this is the bottom of the body piece, you'll just make that and then measure the diameter of that if you wanna know if it's close to my gauge or not. That's just sort of a checkpoint. It does not have to be perfect. As you can see, these guys are two different sizes. This one's a little smaller than this one.

They're both worsted weight yarn. They're both with an F hook, but this yarn was just a little bit thinner than this yarn. So they're still cute. Doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be super specific about the gauge, so I don't need to worry about that.

All right, so you'll need your hook, whatever gets you the gauge that's nice and firm. And then you're gonna need some polyester fiber fill or some kind of stuffing. I like this. It's specifically made for stuffing toys. You can find it in the craft store.

And then because these guys are so tall, they're kind of, you know, if you didn't weight the bottom of this, it would be really hard to get them to stand up on their own. So what I used were these little glass, you can kind of hear what these are probably. They're these glass pebbles that you would find, like, in the flower section of a craft store. And the reason I used these instead of the, I'm trying to think of what it's called, poly beads. Poly beads, something like that.

There's these little plastic beads that, a lot of times, people will use to fill toys. The reason I didn't use that, two reasons, actually. The beads can pop out between your stitches. You could put them in something else, yes. But also the main reason I like these for this project is because they're much heavier than the poly beads.

The poly beads, it's not really enough weight when you fill up the bottom of this. It's not really enough weight to make these guys stand up straight. I actually tried it, and I was like, "We gotta upgrade and use some glass pebbles." Those are gonna work a little better. So you just need, like, not even this whole, I mean, you're not gonna fill him up. You need maybe about 10, 15 of the glass pebbles, depending on the size.

And actually, speaking of that, if you're going to the store to buy these, if you don't already have some, look for the ones that are the smallest. That'll make it easier to stuff. You can see, here's some different types of them. There's these gems that kind of, they're a little more 3D. They're not quite as flat.

Those work, too. But I would look for the smallest glass pebbles that you can find, 'cause you can pack them closer together, and it'll be heavier. All right, then you're gonna need a 3 1/2-inch piece of cardboard, could be any cardboard, box board, whatever. You're just gonna use this as a guide to cut the yarn for the beard. And speaking of the beard, you are gonna use some kind of hairbrush or comb.

If you happen to have a pet and you have a dog brush, that is even better, that's a bonus. We just are gonna use that on the yarn to create the beard fluff. So you're gonna need that. You're also gonna need a little bead for the nose. So I chose these little wooden beads 'cause they had a really nice range of skin tones in there.

And also because the hole in the wooden bead is really small. We're gonna be stitching these on. Here, let me show you. We're stitching them on to the face for the nose. And a lot of the wooden beads that I found at the craft store had a really big hole here.

And you could see that, and I didn't like that. So I looked in the section for the pre-strung beads, and I found some really nice wooden beads that have very small holes in the side. That worked a little bit better. Also, you're gonna need a stitch marker or two for keeping track of, actually, two stitch markers for keeping track of your stitches. And oh, along with the bead, you're gonna need some sewing thread and a sewing needle.

And one last thing, I know this is a long list, but most of these things are things, you know, that are pretty inexpensive, or you might already have them. So the last thing on the list is you need something that you can cut into a circle that you're gonna put inside the bottom of these guys to make it nice and flat. Because when you stuff it with all those beads and the polyester fiber fill, it kind of makes a little bit of a dome shape. And then when you try to sit them up, they're just gonna kind of fall over. So you need to create something that's going to keep that from stretching out and make it nice and flat.

So I would suggest using maybe a yogurt lid container, like this one. You can just cut a circle out of that with scissors. You can use cardboard. The reason I usually shy away from using cardboard for things like this is because I always think, "What if somebody spills their drink all over my gnome, and it gets all wet, and the cardboard gets soggy in there? You know, is it gonna mold what's gonna happen in there?" So I like to stuff things with items where it doesn't matter if it gets wet or not, just thinking about accidents that sometimes happen in my house.

Another thing you could use, this is a closed-cell foam. It's a craft foam. You can buy this at the craft store. This is a little bit thicker. It's, like, maybe a quarter of an inch thick, and that makes it a little stiffer, but you can still cut through it with your scissors.

So this is that kind of foam. It feels just like inexpensive flip flops. It's pliable, but it's fairly stiff because it's thick enough. I wouldn't use the thinner stuff. I don't think that would actually make it flat enough, so.

Phew! All right, you guys. Those are all the materials and tools that you need. So let's start by making the body. So I'm gonna be working on a little replica of this guy here, the little mustard hat and the blue jacket.

But just because the blue is so dark for this stage, I'm gonna be using green instead. So to begin, oh, and Twyla says, "Hi from the San Francisco Bay area where it's raining." Oh, I love San Francisco. Hi, Twyla. And Richard says, "I'm in cold and rainy Spokane, Washington." Cold and rainy? I guess it's raining more than one place.

All right, so to begin, we're gonna start with making an adjustable loop, or also, this is called magic ring, magic loop, lots of different names. So what I like to do is I like to just draw kind of like a little, it's like a cursive E or a loop-de-loop. So this end is attached to my ball. This end is just free. So I'm gonna flip the top of my loop over on top of the strand that's attached to the ball, just like that.

And then I'm gonna put my hook underneath that, and I'm gonna place my finger over here where everything crosses, right there, so that I can pull on this end and make it a little bit smaller. Okay, A little bit more manageable. And then to anchor it, we're going to just chain one, like that. And now we are gonna begin working the body. And actually, if you wanted to check your gauge, you would start with the body bottom, which is this piece, but we'll get to that next.

The body is made by starting with six single crochets into the magic loop. So we're going to work into that loop. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, that's one. Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, there's two. Let's do that a little faster.

Three, four, five, and six. And now we're gonna pull on that beginning loop, just tighten it up a little bit. And at this point, we would place a stitch marker into this first stitch, right there. But I'm gonna work into it, and I know where that stitch is. If you have trouble figuring out where that stitch is after you've worked some single crochets here, then you can count backwards.

So that would be one, two, three, four. Oops, let's try that again. One, two, three, four, five, and six. See, it's sometimes a little bit hard to see that first one. So that's where we're gonna insert our hook.

And we're gonna start doing single crochets. We don't need to do a join. We're not doing a slip stitch here. We're just working right into that very first single crochet. So on round two, we're gonna do two single crochets in this first stitch.

So there's one and two. And then there's gonna be a single crochet in each of the next two stitches, one, two. So before we get too far, I am gonna put my stitch marker in, whoops, into that first stitch of the round there. All right, so we're gonna repeat that again. And we're gonna do two single crochets, one, two, and then one single crochet into each of the next two stitches.

One and two. All right, and the next round, we're on round three here. Wow, Brandon says it's raining in Trinidad. You guys, it's raining everywhere. Oh my goodness.

And Joy Lydia says Hi from Nova Scotia, Canada, cloudy and misting. And Katrina says hello from Croatia. Wow, we got people from all over. That's so exciting, you guys. And Lois says hi from snowy Alberta.

And Diana says hi from drizzly coastal Connecticut. Oh my goodness. Well, hi, everybody. I'm really glad you're here. Okay, so now we are gonna be working on round three.

Oh, wait. Now I gotta check. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight single crochets. Yep, end of round two.

So now we're gonna be working on round three where we work two single crochets in the next stitch, and then we single crochet into each of the next three stitches. Okay, so here's our increase. We're doing two single crochets into that first stitch. I'm gonna mark that again. And on this round, we're gonna mark the beginning of the second repeat, which you'll see in just a minute.

So now we're going to work into the next three stitches, just a single crochet in each. One, two, three. And it's gonna start making sort of a cup shape here at this point, because we don't have enough increases to make a flat circle. I'm just pulling my yarn tail to the front there. All right, and here's my next repeat.

We're gonna do two single crochets here, one and two, and then three more single crochets, one in each stitch. One, two, three. So you can see it's kind of starting to make like a little, like a teeny tiny hat. All right, so like I said, we were gonna mark the first stitch of the second repeat. So let's go back and find that.

One, two, three. And where's our two stitches and one, they're right there. There's the increase. One, two, three, one, two. All right, so I've done this thing lately where I have started placing, when I have two stitches marked like this, sometimes I get confused about which one is the beginning.

And it's not easy for me to remember by color. Like, "Oh, we'll just make the red one the beginning." So I started doing always red at the beginning, like a stop light or a stop sign, so that I remember I'm stopping at the end of the round. And then the other stitch markers can be other colors as long as they're not red. So that's been helping me lately 'cause I can confuse myself very easily. All right, so rounds 4 through 10, we're gonna single crochet around, making an increase in each marked stitch, and then just single crocheting into all the rest.

So this was marked just a second ago. So we're gonna do an increase there, and we're placing the stitch marker back in the first stitch of the increase. And then we crochet around to the next stitch marker. And then we're gonna do two crochets there, two single crochets, sorry. One and two.

Replace the marker into the first of those two and single crochet a round to the end. Okay, so that was round four. And you're just gonna continue doing that, making your increases where you have marked your stitches. And then you're gonna end up with kind of a cone shape. And after you've done that, you're gonna work a bunch of rounds where you're just working one stitch in each stitch around, okay?

So you're gonna end up with a piece that looks like this. So here's our cone shape from all those increases up to round 10. And then 11 through 26, we're just working one single crochet into each stitch around. But I do wanna mention what the stitch marker is doing here. I have a note to place in number, when you're working round 11, I have a note to place a stitch marker in that round.

It can be anywhere in round 11. It does not need to be in a specific spot. Just at some point when you're working round 11, place it through the post so that you're gonna leave it in place. You're not gonna take it out when you work your next round. You're just gonna leave it there because that is gonna tell us where to put the beard later.

So that's our beard marker, right? And then let me just show you how to fasten off here, 'cause there might be some newer crocheters, and you might not know how to stop crocheting. I haven't figured out how to stop crocheting, but. Okay, so here's the last stitch, right there. We did a single crochet.

Then we're gonna insert our hook here, yarn over, pull up a loop, and then pull through the loop on the hook, just like that. And then you cut your yarn, yarn over, and just pull through, just like that, okay? Or whatever fasten off you normally do is fine, too, if you wanna do something different. So this is the shape of our body. So this might be a strange shape, but that little peak goes up inside the hat and gives the hat structure.

This part of the hat, I chose not to stuff so that it can be a little mobile. You know, maybe you're setting him in a tight little space, and you need to tip his hat to the side. Just seemed weird to have a totally stiff hat. So I just wanted enough stiffness to hold it up and make it look like there's a head under there. So this is our little shape that goes underneath everything.

And then the next step is to make the bottom of the body. So let me, oops. We'll just start over here. So we're gonna start with same thing, an adjustable loop, just like we did before. Oops, we're gonna chain one to anchor it, and then this time, we're gonna also work six single crochets.

One, two, three, four, five, six. And then we'll pull on that to make it tight. And then on the next round, we're gonna be working two single crochets into each stitch around. And DJ says it's wet and drizzly in New Jersey. Is it sunny anywhere, you guys?

Okay, we got two single crochets into each stitch around. So that was the first stitch, and we're gonna mark that. So we keep track of our beginning around, and we're just gonna continue working two single crochets in each stitch around. Okay, so there should be a total of 12 stitches here. And then in the next round, we're going to do, let's see, we're gonna be doing the same amount of increases, but it's every other stitch.

So let me see how I instructed you to do that. Two in the next stitch and one in the following stitch. Okay, so we'll do two here. One, two. And then one single crochet in the next stitch.

Okay, skip to the following stitch. We're gonna do two. One, two. And then one into the following stitch. We're just gonna repeat that all the way around.

One, two, and one. One, two, one. One, two, and one. One, two, and one. All right, so we should have 18 stitches at this point.

And then the next round, which is the last one, we're gonna do a single crochet into each of the next two stitches and two single crochets into the following stitch. So you don't have to do your increases in exactly the same place that I do mine. If you have a different method of making a circle, you just need to make four rounds. But I like to place mine in staggered locations, so that I don't get sort of a faceted edge. One, two.

Oh, Diana's wondering how tall these are. Well, I didn't tell you that, but it is in the pattern, let's see. How tall did I make these guys? About eight or nine inches tall with a worsted weight yarn. But if you wanna make them to a different size, you definitely can.

You can just use a thinner yarn for little tiny ones, like if you wanted to make ornaments or something like that. Or you can use a really thick, like a super bulky yarn, to make a big, kind of more like a stuffed animal size, a huggable gnome. Maybe you need to hug a gnome. All right, one, two, one, and two. There.

We've worked round four. Then we would just slip stitch and fasten off, just how we did before on the body. And we'll get a piece that looks just like this. Okay, we'll set that aside for now. The next thing we're gonna work on is the hat.

So we're making this little guy, and you might be wondering, like, why it looks like that. That's because I put an increase on top of another increase on top of another increase, all the way up the hat. So normally I like to spread my increases around so you get a more uniform shape, like a more uniform cone. But because I really like how, kind of, I don't know, it's got a little whimsy, it kind of spins around a little bit. It just looked cuter to me.

So I chose, this time, to place my increases right on top of my other increases. All right, so the hat, we're going to make an adjustable loop, just like before. I'm gonna get started. And then this time, we're gonna do five single crochets into that loop. So one, two, three, four, and five.

And then the next two rounds, we're just gonna be working one stitch into each stitch around. So this is a very small circumference. It can be a little hard to hang onto. I'm gonna tighten that loop up, and then I'm gonna pull this loop so that it ends up on the outside of my hat because I always like to weave in my tails whenever I'm making an adjustable loop, just to make sure that hole doesn't open up later. All right, so we're just working one single crochet into each stitch around.

I'm gonna mark that. And so, like I said before, this is a very, very small circumference. This is one of the hardest parts is being able to just sort of hang onto this itty bitty little thing you're making. It does get easier, though. And this is one of those things, the more you do this, of course, you start to learn how to hang onto things.

Once it gets a little bigger, I like to hold onto little things like this by putting one finger on the inside and one on the bottom or the outside. So here we are at the beginning. Yep. And we're gonna go around one more time without doing any increases. One, two, oops, three, four.

Oh, Brandon is wondering if these can be hung in your trees or if it's too heavy. You know, okay, because I am weighting these on purpose so they can stand up, these would be too heavy. But if you don't weight them, they would be just fine. They're actually pretty light. I mean, the fiber fill is very light.

You know, you can see. And so it just really weighs as much as those balls of yarn. You know, if you wanted to hang these on your trees, though, if you feel like this is, I mean, I guess I don't know if you have a very large tree and you want larger gnomes, but if you wanted to use a smaller, like a skinnier thread, like sock weight, you could make these itty bitty little gnomes. That would be super cute. All right, so we've gone around two times without increasing after we began.

So we're at round four. We're gonna increase in the next, or we're gonna increase in the next stitch and then single crochet around to each to the next four stitches. So here is our increase. One and two, right in the same stitch there. We're gonna put our stitch marker back into that first stitch we made, and now we're gonna single crochet into the next four.

One, two. Looks like I have a little snag there, but I can fix it later. Three, four. All right, and then we have another two rounds of just single crocheting around. See, it's getting a little bit easier to hold onto, just because it's a slightly bigger piece.

But this is one of the challenges of making tiny amigurumi. And this would be even harder if you were doing the sock yarn one. If you've never worked something this small before, you may wanna think about that before you, if you're gonna go out and get some sock yarn for this. Just imagine how it's going to be when you have a teeny, tiny little hat that you're working on here. Okay, here's our second round of working even.

That just means you're putting one stitch in each stitch around. And then the next round, we're going to do an increase, and then we're gonna work to the end. So like I said before, all of the increases are stacked on top of each other in this hat to make it kind of get that little twisty look to it. So in this pattern, I'm directing you to work your increase in the very first stitch, so the marked stitch will be the increases. You don't have to increase anywhere else.

So at the beginning, you're doing an increase, and then you're working even for a little bit. And then you're doing another increase, and then you're working even for a little bit. And then after you get to round nine, that is when you start doing in an increase on each round. So here we are in around eight, and we're just working even on this one row, or this one round, sorry. All right, and then when we get around to the beginning, let's see, one more stitch, then we're going to do an increase in the very first stitch of the round, like we did before, and then work into all the rest of the stitches.

And every time you get to that marker, you do an increase. It might be tricky to count your rounds, which I'll show you how to do that in a minute. But if you don't even wanna count your rounds, you don't have to. You don't have to count anything. You just do an increase where your mark marker is, you can increase there, replace the marker, and then work single crochets around.

Get to the marker, do the same thing over and over and over until you end up with, I think it's 28 stitches. Let's see. 28 stitches, yep. So your piece will look like this, and then you will slip stitch and fasten off. Oh, wait.

Actually, that's not true. We do another couple rounds of increases, which I forgot about. So I'm gonna have to join some yarn here 'cause I'm gonna run out of yarn. But here's our last single crochet of, let's see, round number 29. So round number 30, we're gonna do two single crochets in the next stitch and single crochet into each of the next six stitches.

So two single crochets into the next stitch. This is round 30 here. And then we're going to add, let's add this onto there. This is how I like to join my yarn sometimes. I will just lay it on the top and crochet over it for a few stitches, and then I'll actually pick it up.

So I'm gonna do one single crochet into each of the next six stitches. One, two, three. And now we're pretty close to the end of that strand. Actually, I think I'm going to get rid of that one stitch, 'cause that's too close. All right, well, we'll switch to the next one here.

One, two, three, four, five, six. And then we're gonna increase again. One and two. One, two, three, four, five, six. And we're gonna repeat that again, two more times.

One, two, one, two, three, four, five, six. And then the last repeat. Here's our increase. One, two. And then one, two, three, four, five, six.

All right, so the next round, we're gonna be increasing four times again. So we're gonna do two single crochets into the next stitch. One and two. We'll put our stitch marker in there. And we're going to work seven single crochets this time.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And then we're gonna repeat that again. One, two. Okay, DJ is asking, "How do you increase?" Sorry, I wasn't laughing about that. I was just laughing about all the stuff that I missed.

You guys are having a whole conversation there. So an increase is just putting two single crochets into one stitch. I'm coming up on an increase in a second here, and I'll show you that again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Sorry, I use that interchangeably, but all it is, an increase is simply you're just placing two stitches into one stitch, okay?

Actually, I worked too many there. So here's our next stitch right here, and we're just making a single crochet into that stitch and then another single crochet into exactly the same spot. That's called an increase. It's also just, I mean, in the pattern, it'll be abbreviated two SC in next stitch. That just means two single crochets in the next stitch.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Another increase here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All right, so when we get to the end, we can just slip stitch and then fasten off. We'll cut our yarn.

And leave a long yarn tail because you're going to be using this yarn to stitch the hat to your gnome. But before we do that, we are going to add this edging around it. So this is called the crab stitch, also called reverse single crochet. So we're gonna be actually crocheting backwards. So we're gonna insert a hook into the very first stitch of the last round, which is right here.

It's the same one we slip stitched into. We're gonna grab that yarn, pull it up, and then we're just gonna chain one to just kind of anchor our yarn. Now, I'm gonna crochet over this because I would rather do that than weaving it in. So I'm just gonna leave it on the top of my work, and we're gonna work in reverse. So we're gonna insert our hook into this next stitch to the right, or if you're a left-handed crocheter, you're gonna go to the left, and then you yarn over.

So you just kind of grab that yarn and pull it up like that. And then yarn over and pull through two. We're basically making a single crochet stitch, but we're making it in reverse order. So again, we're gonna insert our hook here, and then we're going to, see, there's my yarn, it's kind of in front of the hook here. And we're gonna grab that, pull up our loop, and then we'll yarn over and pull through two.

Insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And we're gonna work this edging all the way around the bottom of our hat. And when I designed this, I thought, at first, I just did a little contrasting line of single crochet, which you could certainly do if you don't like this or if you're having trouble. If you just don't wanna deal with the going backwards part, that's fine. You can absolutely do that.

You could do a line of slip stitches. You can also just completely leave it off. But I thought it looked really cute having this sort of bumpy texture along the bottom of the hat, because, to me, it in my mind, it's kind of like a little sherpa or something sticking out of the bottom of the hat, like a little fluffy fur, kind of, from the inside of the hat, what I'm imagining. It makes them look all cozy and toasty. And Twyla says, "Oh, boy.

The crab stitch is something I've never done." Yeah, you know what? For some reason, this baffled me for a very long time. I think I maybe had to see a video in order to understand it. I was reading the directions, and I think I was doing my yarn over backwards or something, and I was getting something that did not look at all like this. So it's one of those reasons I really love teaching with video because it's just, there's so many things that you can write and write and write about it, and you can have a gazillion pictures, but sometimes it's just, you have to see it in motion to understand it, I guess.

I don't know. All right, we're almost all the way around. Hey, Patty says, "Hi, a bright and sunny fall day in southeast Missouri." Well, it's sunny in Missouri, you guys. All right, so we've made it all the way around to where we started. I'm gonna slip stitch into that same place where we pulled up our yarn before.

And then I'm just gonna pull that loop through here. That's gonna kind of connect it. I'm gonna fasten off here. You don't need a long yarn tail because we're not using this for seaming. Okay, and that's our cute little edging there, little crab stitch.

All right, so let's see. The next thing we're gonna do is make the arms. Arms are worked back and forth in turn rows. So I'll just start on it a little bit, and I've got some extra arms here already made. But you're just gonna chain 11.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 9, 10, 11. And then you're gonna work into your chain. You can work into the top under the Vs, or you can roll it over and work underneath those back bars if you want. That's how I like to do it. Actually, in this pattern, I tell you to work under the back bars, I forgot, because we're going to be crocheting through our other loops.

You know what, I'm gonna do this in the green, so you can see those a little better, since I already have some blue arms over there waiting. All right, so you're gonna chain 11. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 9, 10, 11. So that last one is gonna count as your turning chain. You're gonna skip that first stitch.

You're gonna go into the second stitch. And so I've rolled my chain over so I can see all these little horizontal bars instead of the Vs. Okay, so it should be flipped like that. And then you're just gonna insert your hook underneath that back bump. Yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two.

There's our first single crochet, and we're gonna crochet into each of these back bumps, all the way across. Sometimes this is called the back of the chain, the bottom bumps. I don't know, there's lots of different ways to describe this. And some of them are very confusing because they sound like the back loop of your stitch, which is a little bit different, which I'm gonna show you in just a second. All right, so you've made it to the end.

Whoops. Get that stitch in there. Then you're going to chain one and turn, and you're gonna work single crochets all the way across. So you're going to start in that very, very first stitch, 'cause our turning chains don't count as a stitch. So that means we work into that first stitch.

And then you're just gonna put a single crochet into each stitch across, okay? So you're gonna work back and forth in turn rows until you have four rows of single crochet. And your piece will look like this. Look, it changed colors. All right.

So just imagine we just finished our fourth row here. Then we're going to chain one and turn our work, just like we're gonna work another row. And then we're gonna fold the foundation chain, which is where we started down here, up in front of here, and we're gonna match up our loops. So like I was saying before, there's a difference between back bumps, back loops. This, right here, is the back loop of your stitch.

So right here, there's a V, there's a loop in the front, and there's a loop in the back. And normally we work under both of those. But in this case, we're gonna work through the front of this edge and through the back of this edge. And to be totally honest, you guys, it really doesn't matter. It's not gonna make that big of a difference if you just stitch through the whole thing instead of working through these particular loops.

I was just trying to get it to look a little bit more round. Oh, let me explain what I'm doing here. Let me back up. So we're just doing slip stitches. So that just means you insert your hook underneath the two specified loops, and then you yarn over, pull up your loop, and pull it through the loop on your hook, okay?

So insert, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull it through the loop on your hook. And what I found was that when I do this, if I make my slip stitches kind of tight, which is naturally how they wanna be a little bit anyway, unless you make a conscious effort to make them looser, it's going to make your cute little arm have an elbow, sort of like a U-shaped elbow. But it's gonna give it a little bit of a curve to the arm, which is kind of cute. So I would say if you want that curve in your arm, make sure you're doing your slip stitches fairly tightly here. You probably don't have to make a conscious effort to make them tight because people just generally make them tight.

See, look what happened. It's a cute little curve right there. Then we're gonna fasten off. Leave enough of a yarn tail so you can sew the arm to the body. And then we're going to work the mitten.

All right, so to begin the mitten, this is just how we've been working before. We're starting with an adjustable loop. I'm gonna go a little bit quicker here because we are getting a little short on time, and I just wanna make sure I have time to explain how to put them together. So one, two, three, four, five, six. We do six single crochets, just how we've done before.

And then we are going to do one single crochet into the next stitch, two single crochets into the following stitch, one, two, one into the next stitch, and then repeat that. One, then two, then one. All right, and then the next round, actually, we're gonna do two rounds even. One, two, there should be eight stitches around, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And we're gonna do that one more time.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. All right, so now on this round, we're gonna be making the little thumb, and we do that with a bobble. This is the only place where you're gonna use the bobble. There's one for each thumb, but this is how we will work it in this pattern. So you're gonna yarn over, insert into the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, and stop.

Now we're gonna repeat that exact same thing four more times. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two, Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through two. You guys are all memorizing this now, right? And you stop when you have six loops on your hook, okay?

And then you're gonna yarn over and pull through all six. And you wanna pull your, you can make those a little bit looser because it's hard to get your hook through so many loops at once. And then pull your hook upwards to stretch those loops out as you pull it through, okay? And then we are just gonna continue on our merry way around the mitten, like that. After we get all the way around, we do one more round and then another half a round, and this is specified in your pattern, and then you just fasten off.

And then you're going to work the crab stitch around the top of your mitten, just like you did before on the hat. And it'll look like this cute little guy. And then you're able to take your, and you're gonna wanna make sure that you fasten off with a long enough tail of that contrasting color, so that that way, or not the contrasting color, of the main color of the mitten, sorry, so that way, you can sew it to the end of the arm. So here's our arm, there's our yarn tails, and we're gonna put it right here on the edge, on the end, sorry. And I like to use my yarn needle, just kind of dig it in here, grab onto that arm and pull it in.

And you can make your arms short if you like and pull them all the way up to the fingertips. Just kind of look at how long you want that arm to be. You can wait until you get the body done, actually, to do this part, but you're just gonna slide it on there as far as you want, and then go back and forth and do some stitches, making sure you are actually going through the stitches of the arm and not just kind of along next to it, inside the mitten. So that's what you're gonna do to attach your mitten to your arm. And once that is attached, cut that off.

All right, we have to make the beard, too. So the beard, you're going to be working back and forth in turn rows to make this little triangle. And actually, I'm gonna show you a couple of those rows because there's a decrease in it. That's, I think, the only place on here where we're doing a single crochet two together. So we're gonna chain 11.

One, two, three, oh, wait, nine. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Sorry, that was too many before. Nine stitches. And then we're gonna work back and forth in turn rows.

The first row, I'm working in the back bump, but you can work into any place on the beard, that's fine. You can work underneath those top two loops if you want. But I'm just doing single crochets all the way across my chain. So we'll have eight stitches total, just like that. And then we get to the end, we're gonna chain one and turn, and then you're gonna single crochet two together at each end of the little triangle you're making.

So to do that, you're gonna insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and then insert your hook in the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop. You have three loops on your hook. Now your yarn over and pull through everything. Then you'll single crochet across until there's two stitches left. And you're gonna do the same thing.

So insert, pull up a loop, insert, pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through all three, okay? And you're at the end of the row, so you're gonna chain one and turn. And you're gonna continue doing that, decreasing on the ends of your rows, until you get a triangle that looks like this. Then you're gonna make some little beard fringe. You're just gonna wrap your yarn around your 3 1/2-inch piece of cardboard, 26 times.

I'm just gonna do it a few 'cause I'm not gonna need all of them since I have a beard almost all the way done. So then we'll just cut that, cut it all at the bottom of your loops, like along the edge of your cardboard, so that you have 26 pieces of yarn ready to go. And then you're gonna be joining them in groups of two. So you'll take two strands of yarn, and you're actually only going to be attaching them to every other row. So the first row, that was eight single crochets across here.

Each one of those eight single crochets gets some yarn tied to it. Then you skip the next row. The next row had four single crochets. It actually had two decreases and two regular single crochets, but four stitches. So you're gonna add four sections of the yarn fringe on there.

And then all the way down on the very last stitch, right here, you're gonna add one section of the fringe there. And when I say section, I just mean, like, two strands of yarn. So I'll show you how I do that. Just insert my hook around the post of the stitch and grab the middle of that yarn. And you're just gonna pull through two of them, two ends, so that you have, you know, your yarn will be going around the back of the post.

And you're gonna bring all those strands together and tie that into a knot, like this. And you're just gonna bring that knot up as close as you can to the fabric and pull on it, make it really tight, okay? So you'll have all these little fringy bits that you're attaching, and it'll look like this when you get them all on there. It's kind of a little bit of a mess. It needs a little bit of a trim.

And oh, you can see here, this really long one, that was my ending tail. I just decided to incorporate it into the fringe, and so I didn't weave it in. So I tied it into that last knot. So I'm gonna trim that off. So to shape your beard, you're gonna leave one strand here.

That's the beginning yarn tail that needs to be long. So you're gonna use that to sew the triangle onto the head. But to shape your beard, first, you gotta get that out of the way. And then you're gonna just kind of look at it and see where it looks shaggy. So I like to kind of brush mine to the side a little bit and then trim off a little bit of this.

And the same thing over here, just kind of brush all the little strands this way and cut off some little straggly bits. And it's okay to have a messy beard, and you can always go back and trim away a little bit more, too, after you've fluffed it up, which is what we're gonna do next. All right, so to get your beard to not look like a bunch of strands of yarn, you can just use a hairbrush, just any hairbrush or comb, and you're going to just start brushing your strands until they start to unravel a little bit. And you may find that you need to, like, actually, like, this is something you should never do to your own hair, but I find that it pulls it a little bit loose if you kind of make it go around in a circle a little bit. And you can go in there if you have some stubborn strands, and you can kind of try to untwist them a little bit with your fingers.

But if you have a dog brush, that'll fluff this up really, really quickly. Make it look very, very fluffy, and pretty much like fur, it'll look like. But I actually kind of like the sort of little wiggliness that I was getting here by just using a hairbrush. So that's kind of up to you. All right, maybe we can work on a little more beard grooming later.

But you guys get the picture. It just gets kind of nice and fluffy. It's really hard to stop doing that. It's kind of fun. All right, I got some extra frizz over here, so I'm just gonna trim that off.

Look how cute that is. All right, so let's talk about assembly here. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna stuff the body with fiber fill. That will go all the way up into the top, like this. And you wanna stuff it fairly firmly.

You don't want it to be distorting the shape too much. See how it's a little bit wide there? You can kinda roll that a little bit to kind of get it into a better shape. When you're stuffing with fiber fill, you really do need to kind of mold it with your hands a little bit. All right, and then you get to put the little glass gems in the bottom.

Actually, before we do that, I'm gonna cut myself a circle out of this. So this circle needs to be about the size of the bottom of your piece. So if you're really careful, you can just use that as a template and cut around it. But if you're a little worried about snipping your yarn, you can certainly trace yourself a paper pattern first and then trace it out onto your foam or your plastic or cardboard or whatever it is you're using. Okay, so that's ready to go.

And now we're gonna grab some gems and put them in there for a little bit of extra weight. And of course, if you were doing this as an ornament, you don't want these. You can just leave it. It's really just there for stability when you're setting it if you just want it to be able to stand up on its own. I'll just put a couple more in there.

All right, and then you're gonna place your piece inside, right here, and put this on top. And actually, when I was doing this before, I actually stitched partway around, and then I stuffed everything, so I didn't have to hang onto it. But I thought you guys could see it a little bit better if I did it this way. So that's an option, too. You can stitch the bottom piece to your body, whoops, 'cause then that won't happen.

You can stitch the bottom piece of your body on first, and then you can stuff the stuff in there. Just shove it in there, but I just wanted you guys to be able to see what I was doing. All right, here we go. Okay, so that goes there. And then we're just gonna do a whip stitch, just catching through each stitch from the body to the bottom of the body.

You probably noticed I didn't use a pin. I'm not really much of a pinner, but if you've never done this before, you could certainly pin these two layers together. Or if you wanted to do it this way and you didn't wanna have all of your gems explode out of it like I did, you could use the pins. Okay, and then when you're almost all the way around, just check and make sure that it's a good shape and you don't need any extra stuffing in there. And then you can go ahead and close it up.

All right, and then weave in your ends. Try to catch some of the yarn, so it has a little bit of friction. Don't just slide it in there because it will have nothing to grip onto. And then you can trim it off. Okay, and then when we're placing the beard, actually, I'm gonna get rid of this little tail.

We already have our handy dandy little marker to show us where to put the beard. So we're gonna line up the top of our beard with our stitch marker that we placed in round 11 of the body. All right, so there's our marker, and we're gonna place our beard. So now, here, I should have shown you this. So this is the little triangle.

We're gonna be stitching around here onto the body, okay? You don't need to catch any of the little beard hairs. Never did I think I would be saying beard hairs in a live event, but there it is. Okay, oh, Brandon was asking if you can use beans to stuff it. You can, I don't think that beans are gonna be as heavy as these glass pebbles, though.

So if you're making a bigger one, I think the beans will make a bigger difference, let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. I took my marker out, and I was not paying attention, so I had to count back. A lot of people do use beans to stuff things instead of those poly fill beads. But the reason that I don't particularly like using those is, well, kind of what I touched on earlier was that if, for example, this were to get wet, somebody spills their wine on it or, I don't know, something happens and it gets wet, then the beans are gonna get wet, and that might cause problems.

So you might end up with a really nice toy that has moldy beans inside of it, and that would be sad. So that's why I like to use things that it doesn't matter if it gets wet. If you are looking for something that maybe you already have at your house, you don't wanna buy the glass gems, you could just, if you happen to have some rocks at your house that you wouldn't miss too much, you could put some rocks in here, too. You can put one rock in there and stuff kind of all around so it doesn't look funny. You just can add stuffing around it.

And actually, if you have the larger gems, you may need to do a little check and see, after you put the gems in, if you need to put a little stuffing around them so that it doesn't look very lumpy. I mean, unless you're going for a lumpy gnome, then go for it. All right, so we've made it all the way around. And I'm gonna just weave in my ends here. There's our little beard.

So at this point, I like to look it over and be like, "Okay, I don't know, I think we need to give you a little bit more of a haircut here." I don't know about you guys, but I like gnomes to have sort of a pointy beard. That's just a personal preference. All right, that looks a little better. All right, so then the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna put the arms on. So here I have an arm, and we're just gonna stitch the arm, one arm to each side of the body, just basically on the side of the body.

And it's gonna go onto the next, so we stitched our beard on this round here, so we're just gonna stitch it on the round below. Or honestly, it could go on the same round. It wouldn't really matter. These arms are pretty long. Just place your arm on there wherever you think it should go.

Somewhere close to the edge of the beard, but you don't want it to be lower than that because you want the edge of the hat to cover the very top of the arm here. So I'm just doing a whip stitch, just stitching the two layers together, like that, weave in my tails, like this, and then we need to put one more arm over here. So that just needs to go on the side, as well. And just when you're doing that, make sure you know where that thumb is. This is where my slip stitch seam is right here, so they're just laying flat against the body.

But just take a look at where the thumb is on your mitten. We should have lined that up, the thumb should be lined up fairly well with that slip stitch seam. But it's gonna look weird if the thumb is somewhere else, if it's pointing backwards, gonna feel like your gnome got into an accident. All right, so we can weave that in. And I'm gonna get rid of this other yarn tail, too, that was on the arm.

I'll just... Okay, and then at this point, I'm gonna get rid of this, too, I would sew the nose on first before adding the hat because then you can bring your hat down around your nose, and you can know kind of where everything needs to go a little bit better when you put that hat on. So I'm just using regular all-purpose thread, and I'm gonna sew this nose on, like, around the same level as those knots. Try not to put it too high up because you might see a little gap of the blue, and that would kind of ruin the idea that there is actually a head under here, not just a blue pointy triangle. All right, I have double-knotted thread here, and I am going to slide my needle through.

Okay, here, maybe you can see this a little better. Here's the knot in my yarn. Here's my yarn. I mean, my thread. I'm going to put my needle through that loop, right there, because when I pull on it here, that knot is gonna be caught in the thread that I just sent through it, and it's not gonna pop through the holes in my stitches.

So I'll just take one more little stitch, just to make sure it's anchored, and then we are going to sew on our nose. So I just ran that through the little hole in the bead. And I'm gonna put this somewhere, like, along the sides of that knot. It's gonna end up being just above that knot, but I kind of want it to be a little bit on top of it so that we are hiding the edge of this, hiding the edge of your beard and also hiding the blue from underneath the edge of the hat when we put that on. Okay.

And Twyla suggested using stitch markers to hold the pieces together. That is a good idea. I do do that sometimes. Sometimes I just forget. Well, actually, okay, to be totally honest, sometimes I'm just too excited to get my pieces together, and I don't pin, and I don't use stitch markers, and I just hold them together, which is silly, because then sometimes you have a glass pebble explosion as you're working on it, right, as we all saw.

Okay, Richard says, "We had a couple tons of rice when I started making gnomes. I put in a Ziploc bag, and then I taped over it." Yes, "That should keep it from getting wet." That is true. That is a good idea. And Diana likes the mitten. She thinks they're adorable.

Thank you. I know. They make it look extra cute. All right, here's the hat. So when I put the hat on, what I did was I looked at the hat, and there's one end of it, like, where you fastened off, that kind of wants to stick down a little bit lower because that's where your increases are.

So it kind of does this thing. I put that in the back. I thought that looked the cutest, and it fit really well over the nose. I'm gonna get rid of this right here. I'm just gonna tuck this into the crab stitch.

I'm sliding it through all those little loops, and we'll go once back in the opposite direction. Get rid of it. You could actually just leave this up inside the hat, too, but I just wanted it out of the way for sewing this on there, 'cause I tend to get my yarns all in a tangled bunch when I have too many yarns going on. All right, so we're gonna place that hat right down on top of his head. Oh my goodness, you guys.

It's getting so cute. And so you wanna pull it down so that his hat kind of bends around his, looks like I have a little thread there. I'll have to fix that later. You wanna pull the hat down so that there's like a little bit of a arch, kind of, framing in that nose there. So it looks like that.

But you should be able to cover up the edge of the beard base like that. Okay, just for fun, I'm gonna put some pins in. I'm turning over a new leaf, you guys, right now, using pins. So I got that in a good spot. And we're using this color to stitch right above where that white is.

And you might be wondering, "Why didn't you just use the white yarn tail and stitch that on?" And the reason that I didn't do that was because I found it really difficult to make those stitches and have them blend into that crab stitch edging. So that's why I fastened off with this color and left it long. So what I'm doing here, you can sew this on whatever way you want to. You can just go in and out and in and out. But what I like to do is I like to do a backstitch.

So what that means is my needle, I'm a right-handed person, so my needle always points to the left. I insert my needle behind where it came out, and then I go ahead of where it came out. So that's like halfway in between, behind, and then ahead, behind, and then ahead. And that leaves less of a gap. That's why I like to do a backstitch it.

It's hard to make your needle go in and out, in and out unless you have a really nice curved yarn needle, which I do not. And when you get to the nose, you don't need to stitch over here because that's gonna be in the way of the wooden bead, and you kind of want this to come out forward a little. So you just make a stitch to this side of the nose and then make another little stitch on this side of the nose, and that'll hold it just fine. I mean, if somebody comes and pulls up the edge of that hat to see what's going on under there, well, then they deserve to see the blue void instead of a head, right? All right.

We're almost all the way around. And as I'm going over the arms, I am actually stitching through the very top of the arm or just above where the arm is. You just wanna make sure this doesn't slip off. It just looks a little better if the arm looks like it's coming out from underneath the hat, to me. Like, he just got really shy and pulled his hat down over everything, including his shoulders and most of his face.

Oh, okay, Diana's asking, "What kind of needle do you use? You seem to get the yarn through so quick." Okay, this is just a yarn needle, and they come in lots of different sizes. I really like the metal ones for this because the plastic ones are kind of bendy. So this might have, like, a slightly larger hole than the one that you're using. I'm not really sure what the exact size was, but I'm gonna give you a little quick tip on getting the yarn through.

If you having a hard time getting the yarn to go through your needle, you can wrap your yarn over your needle, like this, and then pinch it really tight just below. That makes kind of a stiff little loop. And then you can use that to put it through the eye of your needle and then pull it through. I would try that if you are having a hard time or look for a yarn needle with a slightly bigger eye. Isn't he so cute, you guys?

So one little last thing is the little stars, or stars, or maybe they're snowflakes, I don't know. They're some sort of wintriness. I'm just gonna do one to show you how they get put together. But you don't even need to put them on if you don't want to. I think he looks very cute without them, but I just wanted to bring a little bit more of that contrasting color up into the hat.

It just looked kind of, I don't know, it was just too much space without a color change for me. So to do this, I just inserted my hook, or inserted my needle somewhere through here, and I'm actually inserting it through the blue with the stuffing to get a little extra, I can feel it kind of dragging a little more. And just pull it until that end pops through. Boop. And then you can't see it anymore.

And then I take a couple little stitches here, just some tiny stitches, knowing that you're gonna cover that up. And that's gonna anchor your yarn, okay? So we're gonna cover those up by making a stitch right on top of those. Gonna make a little stitch here. Basically what we're making is three lines that all intersect.

So you can imagine, one point being here and one point being here. So we're gonna go in, and we're gonna come out where I put my pin. You can actually do the, I mean, if this helps you to visualize it, you can put the pins in. Otherwise, you can just eyeball it. And then we're gonna follow that line straight over here.

And then we're going to come up over here by this pin. I'm gonna remove the pins, so they don't get stuck. So here, we have sort of a skinny X, and then we're gonna just divide it one more time. And then you can come out over here, wherever you like. And then you're gonna do three more lines.

Okay, and then you're just gonna place these wherever you wanna put them. And if you want to, you can mark those ahead of time. You can put a little pin in there, or a stitch marker would be another good option, too, just to make sure that those get dispersed around the hat in a way that you like. But these are really easy to remove in case you put one someplace, and you're like, "Oops, I didn't want one there." So that would be totally fine. So I'm just gonna continue putting these around here later, after this, 'cause we are definitely out of time.

But this was such a joy to make, you guys. These are just so much fun. And I never knew that something without any eyeballs could be so cute. So I really hope that you guys make these. I hope that they bring you a little extra joy this holiday season.

Thanks so much for joining me. Goodbye.