When I first started Gnorwen, I flipped through my sketches of gnew gnome ideas and came across a swirled I-cord hat. As I worked it up, my friends jokingly called it the soft-serve hat. Little did we know just how prophetic that would be.
That’s right, when I first designed her, I didn’t know she’d be intrinsically involved with ice cream.
It was the mittens that did it.
I was test knitting and writing in the middle of a July heat wave and I just wondered, “Why am I doing mittens now?” And I had this weird worry that you would ask the same thing even though All Work, Gnome Play would come out in fall. Weren’t mittens a winter gnome accessory?
That’s when Gnorwen got her job in the Gnice Cream Shoppe. As she herself said in Clue 9: “I’m aways cold working in the enchanted ice cream shoppe!” says Gnorwen. “Have you been around a Chill Charm or a Freeze Intensifier Wand? I wear mittens to keep myself warm. Cold fingers are stiff, and stiff fingers can’t create the wondrous ice cream sculptures and fantastic cones that make every workday a play day.”
And then another detail jumped into focus.
As I wrote the fun chatter bits for her it and posed her for photos, it seemed odder and odder that I’d designed a gnome who could hold things without giving her something to hold.
And so I whipped up the Tiny Ice Cream pattern and tested it even as Clue 1 was soon to drop!
I really enjoy how much of her own self Gnorwen has. She’s so completely her own gnome.
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