FO: Elephant for Amelia

This is very much out of order, but it's been so long since I did a proper blog post that wasn't about a video and this is one that have photos of already, so you get to see it now :)

A girl I used to work with was having her first baby - a girl - so of course I had to make her a stuffed animal. The mom is obsessed with elephants, so I knew that would be a good choice.

This is the Peanut the Elephant pattern from Stacey Trock's book Crocheted Softies.  I made this pattern back in 2013 and gave it as a gift, and this is one of the first patterns in this book so it is designed to be very easy. It's really just circles and the only shaping is in the trunk. 

There is a little mouth beneath the trunk, which is very cute.

There is also a tiny tail - so cute. I used I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby in the Gray Mist colorway. I picked this because it's the color gray I had in my stash, but I wound up needing to buy another skein anyway, lol. Oh well, it's a very useful color for making animals.

I changed the shaping on the trunk just to give it a little more bend, but it honestly looks the same as the first one I made lol. 

And I gave her a bow since this is for a girl just to jazz things up a bit. This is just a tube of about 20 stitches around and 4 rows tall. I keep the yarn attached and did a few single crochet stitches until it was long enough to wrap around the center tightly, then I used the tails to sew it all on the elephant. Easy peasy. The bow was made of some ancient yarn I've had since high school and I have no idea what it is now.

I did baby safe felt eyes this time, which look a little bit surprised, but at least the baby won't choke. I just realized I should have embroidered eyelashes. Dang...

But here is the elephant with her lovely new owner. Isn't she adorable? I hope she grows to love her elephant with time especially since it has so many appendages to chew on. It was nice to make a crochet animal again after a long time, and now I kind of have the bug so I expect you'll be seeing more of them in the future again.