<Living Crafts Blog

Thank you all who participated in this contest and sent photos in. It has been a difficult, yet wonderful experience to review each and every photo and choose the finalists for this contest. Following are the finalists, each with a number. Please vote for your favorite, and please make comments if you wish, but your vote counts only if you check the box next to the number assigned to the photo. First prize for the winning photo is a $100 gift certificate to choose products from Briggs and Little, the manufacturer of the yarn specified for the gnome hat in our Fall 2009 issue. In addition, the winner receives a two-year subscription to Living Crafts! All other finalists will receive 2 free back issues of their choice, or 2 extra issues added to their current subscription. 

Here are the 17 entries (voting now closed).

And here are the results!

When planning our Fall 2009 issue (on newsstands in late August of that year), Thomas Horst’s felt coat was scheduled to be on the cover. The gnome hats (designed by Alanah Caron) were going to be the side dish. But the image of those two gnome boys fishing in the creek so charmed our staff and newsstand manager that it won the cover. As the editor, it was a hard choice. I love both of these projects. I felt uneasy about the decision for a long time, and I know that beautiful coat deserved to be on the cover more than anything. I hope Thomas Horst will grace our magazine with a project again—if he will still give me the time of the day, it will be on the cover this time.

You’ll find instructions on how to make this fabulous coat in the same issue.

But something about those beloved gnome hats caught on. When our art director was designing the issue, her teenage son and his friends saw the hats and thought they would be great to wear on the ski slopes. As a matter of fact, I believe Susan’s son was determined to learn how to knit it himself. As we learned later, he was not the only one. That winter many gnome boys and girls were seen on ski slopes all over the country! What I had thought would be a favorite among toddlers and kindergarten boys, went way beyond my imagination and became a favorite of teenagers and adults as well.

I’m glad we made the decision to include instructions for both the adult and the child size.

Since the Fall 2009 issue came out there has been many gnome and pixie hat designs out there on the blogsphere and in knitting books, but I believe our pattern is the only one that comes in adult size too.

Now it is winter again, and nearly two years later, with this new blog, we have a photo contest for all of you. If you can, dig up some photos of you and your family members in the gnome hats you’ve made with our pattern, or take new ones. They don’t have to be made with the yarn specified, but with our pattern. Please send them to me by February 22^nd, and on the 25^th, we will post the finalists on our website so everyone can vote to pick the winner!

The prize for the winning photo is a $100 gift certificate to choose products from Briggs and Little, the manufacturer of the yarn specified for the gnome hat in our Fall 2009 issue. In addition, the winner receives a two-year subscription to Living Crafts!

Please email your photos to editor@livingcrafts.com by February 21st 11:59 p.m. EST, and the finalists’ photos will be posted on our blog within a week for voting. Winner will be announced by February 28th.