This is mostly for Theresa who was asking about this book in her post today. It's a mini-review of Teddy Bears
The bears are all knit with Rowan dk weight yarns from what I could tell, but I suppose you could size them up or down depending on whatever yarn you had. Many of the actual bears look similar, although there is a garter stitch bear thrown in and a couple of colorwork bears too. Many of the bears have little outfits, some quite elaborate!
I haven't knit any of these up yet, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the patterns or the ease of following them, but the bears are super cute and so are the outfits. In fact, when I pulled out the book to write this up, Maddie asked if I'd knit her some of them. I haven't looked at this book in a while, but Theresa's post today has gotten me thinking. Bears and handspun may just be a great match!
(I'll post this over at Two Friends Collect Books too!)
I like the Teddy Bears book. I made the Stars and Stripes bear as a fairly new knitter (I guess I had been knitting about 5 months) and it was pretty easy to follow, although I did have to get some help understamding some of the directions. For example, when she would say to increase on "every following alternate row". If she had said "every other row" that would have made more sense to me.
I substituted yarns and it came out great. Still used all Rowan, but used what I had available instead of the specific ones called for in the pattern. I'd post a link to a finished photo, but I'm not sure I can do that here. Anyway, I'd like to make the pilgrim/Thanksgiving bears sometime. They're really cute.
Posted by: katie | Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 12:58 PM
I love the bears in this book. I've knit two (?) and they turned out adorable. But there is a ton of sewing. The bears and all their little aricles of clothing are knit in a million pieces so there is almost as much sewing (ew) as knitting. I felt the same way about Kath Dalmeny's World of Knitted Toys.
Posted by: Jessica | Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 02:11 PM