Grey Elephant - a soft toy little elephant hand knitted in 100% naturally colored wool

This elephant is hand knitted by me from 100% natural undyed wool and stuffed with pure Shetland wool.

A client once asked me: can you knit an elephant? The pattern for the elephant you see here is the result of her directions - can you make the truck more pointy? Can the ears be bigger? And so on. I'm so grateful to her as I really like how they come out. I don't know if I could have done it on my own!

Elephants take me a day to make and this one is about 7 inches or 18 cm tall. I mainly use wool from independent British producers. The wool I use for these elephants might be pure Shetland (so is lovely and soft) , North Ronaldsay (absolutely gorgeous single breed!), pure Wensleydale (lustrous with a bit of a halo) of a rather nice Westcountry Tweed, spun by the Natural Fiber Company in Cornwall.

Apart from being a beautifully tactile fiber, wool has antibacterial and fire retardant properties and elephants can be washed gently if needed. All features are hand embroidered to make them as secure as possible.

Did you know, these are the only ones of my animals whose ears I have to iron before sewing them on?