I decided since my brother likes anime, he might appreciate an amigurumi toy for their baby. I started to knit a sweater for the baby, but have gotten very sidetracked by making those little gymshoe slippers (three pairs so far, soon to be four pairs!), and now, with this little amigurumi toy. My brother has this thing about making fun of gnomes, so I thought this amigurumi gnome would be a funny thing to make, and anyway, it's pretty cute! (Lion Brand's site has quite a few very cute amigurumi patterns that I may yet make before my niece/nephew is born) Unfortunately, I overstuffed his feet a bit, so you can see the stuffing showing through, but I get worried that over time, stuffed things seem to lose their loft, so I figured that I would overstuff the toy a bit to allow for that loss of loft. There's nothing worse for a child to play with a stuffed toy and for that toy to get flat over time!There was quite a variance between the yarn colors. All of the yarn was Red Heart Super Saver (for value, washability, and no allergy worries), but it seemed to me that the darker colors were very soft, but the lighter colors were very stiff; I'm guessing it's the contents of the dyes that made the difference? There also seemed to be quite a variance over the thickness of the yarn, too. Nothing listed on the label was different gauge-wise, but just holding the yarn and working with it, you could tell that some yarns were thicker and some were thinner.
I opted to make eyes out of knots of yarn instead of using the "safety eyes" as in the pattern. I'm not sure what "safety eyes" are; I saw some eyes that looked like the right ones at Joann Fabrics, but they didn't say "safety eyes", and I just didn't feel comfortable using something that a baby might be able to pull off and (God forbid!) choke on.
He was a cute, fun project, but I really need to get back to that sweater! I'm glad that my brother and sister-in-law announced their news very early on, because I have closer to the nine months to try to plan for the layette; had they would've announced their news at like 5 months or something, I'd be cramming everything in a short span of time.
