Pinecone Gnomes

I was walking through the garden with my wee Bloom this morning and heard a small rustling of leaves.  Our attention was drawn down to the roots of a great pine tree.  

Nestled among the roots, pine needles and fallen leaves were these two little fellows, doing their best disguise themselves among the pinecones.

The two little gnomes squeaked in terror when they realized they'd been spotted, but after my wee Bloom and I knelt down and assured them we meant no harm, they invited a third friend to join them.  Introductions were made with a "How do you do, and a how do you do, and a how do you do, again..." (the gnomes in my garden are, apparently, very formal little fellows!)  We talked about the weather, the fallen leaves and the migrating birds. Then our new friends said they must be on their way to help the local squirrels hunt a few last acorns, so we parted ways with a very formal "Hope to see you, and a hope to see you, and a hope to see you again soon!"  And I'm sure we shall...

If you would like to see some pine-cone gnomes in your garden, you'll want to find some smallish pinecones and 1-inch wooden beads with 3/8th inch holes like these.

As you can see, I made a simple pattern for the hats out of newsprint...  These hats are about 2 1/2 inches high.

To help the little gnomes balance, you may want to cut some feet from matching felt and glue them to the bottoms of the pine-cones.  One of my pine-cones was still a little wobbly so I reinforced the felt base with a piece of cardboard (and if your pine-cones are really wobbly, you can add some weight by gluing a penny to the base...)

If you want your gnomes to have mittens, you can cut 3 inch lengths of pipe-cleaner, run a line of glue along the center 2 inches and then place it in among the bristles through the middle of your pine-cone.  Leave an inch, or so, of the ends of your pipe cleaner sticking out in front to form two arms.

Then glue your bead to the top of the pine-cone, glue the hat to the top of the wooden bead and mittens to the ends of the pipe-cleaner arms.  Finally, if you wish, you can paint or draw little faces.  For these gnomes I used colored pencils to draw the faces, and I think it worked out nicely. Don't you?