Juniper Moose is an adorable stuffed moose, and the pattern is free right now from Knitpicks. (Here’s the link.) That’s the official image from Knitpicks at right. Isn’t the moose cute? It was designed by Rachel Borello Carroll – here’s her Ravelry page showing all her patterns and here’s her website. There are a lot of cute stuffies: I’m looking at her hedgehog pattern as well.

Because everyone needs a stuffed moose for the holidays, I dug into my stash and cast on. I had some Sirdar Tweedie Chunky in brown and beige, which apparently had been waiting for this project. The yarn is discontinued, so here’s a Ravelry link. A tweed moose seemed ideal to me.

I did drop down a needle size, and worked with 5mm needles. That seemed a better match with the yarn, and I prefer to have a denser fabric with toys so the white stuffing doesn’t show through. (If I knit it again, I might go down to 4mm, because the stuffing does show through a bit, esp in the rivers between my DPNs.) I also decided to use buttons for eyes, instead of the safety eyes recommended, as no children will be playing with my moose.

The pattern is really well written and quite easy. Of course, there are many pieces – that’s the way of it with knitted toys. Here are all the moose pieces:

I decided against the wreath and just gave him a ribbon. Here’s my assembled moose:

I made one modification: Juniper Moose has no tail, but of course, real moose do. I joined the main colour yarn where the base of his tail should be and worked an inch of I-cord before binding off.

I think he needs a pompom nose, but I don’t have one. We’ve entered lockdown so it will have to wait. He is cute, though, don’t you think?