Meet Gimli

Pleased with the helmet.  In hind-sight, I would have made the helmet in the darker grey and then used the lighter grey for the details . . . but I already had the light grey in my stash.  I had planned to use a similar coloured grey felt, but none was to be found.

Finished Gimli helmet

And I'm especially pleased with the beard 'cuz that makes the whole costume work--if I do say so myself.

Finished dwarf beard

The beard wasn't hard, but it was a little tedious cutting all those strands and then attaching them.  Still, the effort was well worth it!  The grey bands around the braids really finish off the beard nicely too.  

Helmet and beard worn together

Meet the little dwarf--even without his axe and tunic, he's one happy dude.  He'll be in full battle garb come Halloween night.  I'll have to remember to post some photos.

I must confess it was a nice change to leave the bedspread and work on some "quick" projects.  I needed the change of pace.

A Little Something . . .

So my kids were thinking about Halloween costumes.  One of the boys decided he wanted to be Gimli from Lord of the Rings--a noble character.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Gimli

One thing led to another . . .  so now I'm making a helmet and beard for someone's costume.  To be fair, I made the offer 'cuz I know crocheters and knitters are resourceful people.  If they can't find something, they make it.  Simple as that!  We couldn't find fake beards or even helmets, so we decided to make our own.

Gimli's helmet in progress--almost done too!

This is the helmet--almost done.  There's no detail as of yet.  We plan to add it later and embellish with golden thread.  I'm using a pattern I found on Ravelry: Viking Hat has horns and some knobby bits 'round the brim.  I've eliminated both.  My hope is to add a darker grey for the details and roughly embroider it in gold thread.

Yarn for the beard and helmet detail

The beard will be an interesting challenge, but I found lots of orange yarn and two great patterns to try.  I'm sure one of them will prove satisfactory.  If nothing else, it will be a fun experiment.

Both patterns came from Ravelry: Epic Viking Beard is pictured on the left and Viking or Dwarven Beard is on the right.  I'm leaning towards the latter.  The base is already complete and enough lengths of orange yarn have been cut to start threading the beard.

I'll keep you posted.
Later,