An Elephant

This is a favorite book of my granddaughter Sophia:

An elephant encounters a chubby little red-haired baby, invites him for a ride and then goes on a bit of a gustatory crime spree, stealing cookies, meat pies, apples...and going 'rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta all down the road' ....with a growing line of shopkeepers chasing after them.

It's a splendid read for grandmas who used to want to be actresses and quite enjoy dramatic picture book interpretation. And I have lovely memories of my husband reading this to Patrick when he was Sophia's age. Unfortunately, as I looked for current places selling the book, I discovered it is out of print in the US and only available at a reasonable price in the UK. My copy is one we've had since the 80s and is literally in pieces.

Sophia and I have had so much fun with this book that when I saw a simple pattern for a knitted elephant, I just had to make one for her.

Two actually -- here you see the nearly-finished first one, and the completed flat body of a second, larger one:

Finished, wearing a little hat of a spool-knitted scrap:
And here Elephant is united with her new owner, a little red-headed not-so-chubby toddler:

I got the pattern out of this book written for children:

Here is a picture of the follow-up book.
Both of these books are essentially '....the Waldorf approach to knitting captured between two covers...' You can read more about them near the bottom of this page at Bob and Nancy's Bookshop.

Next, I think I am going to make a little pink piggy and I'd like to make that gnome pictured on the cover...