ELMO!!!

Another first for me!  My very first crocheted stuffed doll!

I love Elmo.  I think I'm pretty safe in saying my kids love Elmo, too. So with some extra red yarn laying around, I decided to try to make my granddaughter an Elmo doll.

I found the pattern on "Maggie Makes Stuff" blog.  CLICK HERE to get to Maggie's blog for the pattern.

It was an easy work-up.  I spent maybe two evenings making Elmo body parts, then a quick evening of sewing them together.



The funniest part of the process was seeing Elmo body parts laying on my bed and my tables!!!

Head and body with mouth attached

Making the mouth looks like it would be confusing but follow the directions and you'll be fine.  I used red yarn to sew the mouth in place.  You can see the difference in the look this makes by comparing my Elmo's mouth and Maggie's Elmo mouth.





When I got to rows 24-25, where the directions say "inc 4 times evenly", I didn't worry about counting the stitches.  I just pressed the work together to find the "4 corners".  Think of it as finding the 12-3-6-9 positions on a clock.






In the photo, my thumb would be 6 o'clock, making the needle position 12 o'clock.  The two points on each side then become 3 and 9 o'clock.  And I have the 4 points where I would do the increase.


As I crocheted the legs and arms, the tiny cylinder shapes were a slight challenge to my older fingers but I found if I stuffed them with cotton balls as I worked, that made it much easier on me. 

It sure was fun to start putting him together and watch him actually start to look like an Elmo!!

But of course the final reward to all of this work is seeing him being hugged and loved by my granddaughter, Miss Marci!!  Marci's mom posted on facebook, "She required Elmo to join us on our trip to Target today, and that was the first time she HAD to bring a stuffy.  I couldn't even trick her into leaving it in the car."

And that, my friends, is the sole reason we all do this!!