Knitted Girl Elephant (Jean Greenhowe)

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I knew I was going to knit a specific toy for my nearly-three-year-old grandson, so wanted to make something small for my four-month-old granddaughter.  She has some teddies and other soft toys, so I decided to try the girl elephant from Jean Greenhowe's 'Knitted Animals' booklet, something I've had for many years, and used extensively about twenty-five years ago.

The finished elephant is only about 15cm (6 inches) high, so it was fairly quick to make. The pattern shows four elephants: a girl in a pink stripy dress, a boy with a stripy top, a sailor with a blue outfit and cap, and a bedtime elephant with a nightcap. The girl elephant was the obvious one to choose, and I decided immediately that I would not include the twisted yarn bow that's by the toy's ear (I was going to say 'hair' but elephants don't have hair!)

The instructions, as always with Jean Greenhowe's patterns, were straightforward and everything worked as expected. The body is nicely made with undergarments in white (I used cream).  Rather than bright pink for the dress, I used a purple-pink, with stripes in cream.

The face was straightforward. This author has developed an excellent method of using knots of varying sizes, and threading each end of a piece of yarn through an opening to secure it. I don't like embroidering faces, but this not method for eyes works very well. Since the elephant has a trunk, there were no other facial features.

I thought the end result was rather sweet:

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