Scarves, But No Bears

I'm afraid I haven't fulfilled the earlier promise of the post which asked you to identify a small pink piece of knitting. It was intended to be a teddy bear's ear, but after I'd knitted four of them and began to assemble the pieces, I was eventually filled with a fit of rage and disgust, and I threw all the bits away. Well, perhaps rage and disgust is putting it a bit strongly, but I got fed up with it. I like sewing, but I don't always like sewing knitting, and that particular piece wasn't ingenious enough to hold my attention. And I had sewn the teddy bear's legs together by mistake.

So the pockets on the little scarf will remain empty, unless I find another teddy / rabbit / pig to take the place of the discarded one. The little scarf is cute, though.

It's from Knitting for Children and their Teddies, and is actually meant to be scarf for a bear, but I sized it up a little bit. Here you can see it on Sylvester, who is being very patient given that I haven't knitted him a scarf for himself yet. Rowan Kid Classic in Feather and um, something else.

After all this fiddle faddle, it was a great relief to return to Aria. I completed another ball of Natural Silk Aran and today I would have finished another, except that I made a mistake while I was watching Startup.com, which was on BBC4. I don't think the film was that gripping, I just kept thinking it was going to be gripping so I knitted a purl row by mistake. Since it would have been at the back of the neck, I pondered leaving it but for once my better self won out and I ripped it back.
I'm nearly half way through the yarn, and I think I'll use it all.

The ingenious Vivienne answered my question about putting functioning buttons in the sidebar, so you can now click on the Knitting New Scarves Knitalong button and be whisked magically thereto. Oh, and there's a new jigsaw too.

P.S. The reason there were four teddy bear ears is because each ear consisted of a front and a back, not because the teddy was a mutant.

Jeans and a Sweater for Pooh

I told you I was going to knit some clothes for somebody's Pooh Bear. One the left, you can see what Pooh looked like when he was new.



This is what he looks like now. He has seen some hard loving. As well as needing some new clothes, it was thought that they might help hold him together.





I didn't use any of the patterns from Knitting for Children and their Teddies by Fiona McTague, because, although it's excellent, it doesn't actually have any patterns for bears of this very special shape; I did get all my ideas from it however.



It has lovely patterns for sweaters and hats and scarves, in child sizes and bear sizes, and they are so cute it's difficult not to make a fool of yourself while you're looking at the pictures. Lots of shrieking and cooing.


It has a handy little guide to How to Measure Your Teddy.







It has a pattern for a little pocket-size teddy with a l-o-n-g scarf.







The teddy will fit in the pocket on a child's scarf.











The only complaint I have about it is that it doesn't have schematics, a situation which usually reduces me to foul language, but one can't really curse in the presence of these pictures.

First of all, I made him a little pair of jeans, in Rowan All Seasons Cotton in Dusky, using the pattern for the trousers that accompany the stripy sweaters in the first photo. They became dungarees, held up by a single strap, so that they couldn't easily be removed by a certain Little Sister.

And then I made a little sweater in an apple green shade of Rowan Wool Cotton. I had offered to make a stripy sweater, to match one I knitted for his owner, but this offer was tactfully rejected and a single colour chosen. The sweater perhaps lacks elegance, but he does look well turned out.

I started about tea-time on Friday, and had them finished by the time I left after Saturday lunch, stopping only to eat, drink, have a game on PlayStation 2, and sleep. Otherwise I was kept pretty hard at it. Frequent cries of 'Is it ready yet?' kept me going.