Curious Oliphaunt

Stewart loves his new Oliphaunt. Just finished, we thought he looked like he was asking a question when he has his head tilted to the side a little bit, so Stewart decided he would be "curious Oliphaunt". I am particularly happy with his eyes. I found some of the black Zephyr left over from the Kitri socks, and lo and behold, there were still some beads strung on it! So I decided to try and integrate a bead for each eye, and make his eyes look a bit more interesting. While this was a fairly easy knit, I am still not crazy about knitting stuffed animals. I don't like the finishing, trying to hide ends inside a body and not sure if the ends will stay afixed. I did change the ears for this guy - several people had done knitted ears rather than the crocheted ears called for in the pattern. While I can crochet, I just didn't like the way the ears were turning out when I crocheted. I thought the knitted ears looked better. With his big floppy ears, he is definitely an African elephant!





Moving along to my next project, I decided to cast on Annie Modesitt's Backyard Leaves scarf instead of beginning the grey sweater for me. Numerous reasons for this, but I am not unhappy to put the sweater on hold for a bit. The backyard leaves pattern is beautiful and fairly easy to follow, except you have to be right on top of the pattern all the time. No watching TV and knitting on this one. This will probably become less critical as I knit a few repeats and get the pattern down pat. Anyway, love the pattern and the colour of the yarn. I'm thinking ahead to spring...