In Which Mittens are Made, and Gnome Placement is Considered

I just finished off a pair of 36-Stitch Mittens by Elizabeth Zimmermann,to which I added flip tops, and also added a button-hole and a flap to the thumbs for texting convenience.  These are a gift for a friend, and I hope she likes them.

These were knit in Eton, by Ornaghi Filati, and are a wool/acrylic blend.  I like the colour, which shifts from purplish to a rather inky colour depending on the light.  The thumbs took a few tries until I was happy with them, but, after finishing them up while I was busy having trouble sleeping last night, I think they'll do nicely.

 

 

Now, on to the consideration of Gnome Placement.

My mother-in-law (who, by the by, is a truly wonderful mother-in-law) gave me a garden gnome for my birthday.  Luckily, my mother-in-law knows me well enough to have found just the best possible garden gnome for me, as it's nicely understated and entirely cute without being cutesy.  Now, the tricky part is deciding where to put it, so, I took her out to select a site, and have a few options:

Front bed by hostas, please ignore weeds

Front bed, in front of Autumn Joy Sedum

Backyard planter, in front

Backyard planter, nestled.

Backyard planter, hiding among lingonberries

The nice thing about the planter in the backyard is that I can see her from the kitchen; the nice thing about the front bed is more people can see her.  Possible difficulties are that in the back, the kids could reach her (though they're getting pretty good most days about leaving things alone once they've been told often enough), and that in the front she could fall prey to hooligans (not that we've had a lot of trouble with hooligans, but someone did smash one of our solar garden lights for no particular reason a few years back).

So, any votes?  Which plants does she want to hang around with?