I can’t remember where I read it, as I have been on a lot of blogs admiring handmade felt or wooden gnomes, but somewhere I came across the plural term for a group of gnomes as being a whimsy. How wonderfully appropriate!
Over Christmas, after finding this tutorial, I went a bit gnome-happy with some peg dolls I found in the back of my craft cupboard. In a couple of evenings, I whipped up a dozen colourful friends and even improvised a little baby gnome with a needle-felted head.
We have started sanding our tree rounds!
We worked for over an hour and managed to get one big and one small round mostly smooth. Little Gnome didn’t last that long, although he worked hard and with great enthusiasm to start with he struggled to use enough pressure with the sandpaper to make much difference to the wood…
At this rate, I expect us to need another six or seven sessions before we can move on to the much more exciting construction phase. I considered buying a little electric sander, but decided not to (for this project, at least) because it will be an important lesson in diligence, patience and hard work.
I went a bit gnome-happy with peg dolls over Christmas and my Little Gnome decided that they needed a home. His friend has a lovely wooden tree house for his gnomes and we had a little browse online to see what other ideas there were… I soon realised that they were a little out of our price range.
Then we came across a blog post showing how one family had made their own out of tree rounds and sticks…
Thus we have our long-term handicraft project – Project Gnome Home.
I spent around £20 on 2 large and 10 small tree rounds and over the next few weeks we will be sanding them down, collecting and sanding other sticks to use with them, and eventually constructing something homey for our whimsy.
We can’t wait to get started!
Setting Sparks 