Debbie Bliss Teddy Bear

 

About once or twice a year I get the urge to hand knit an entire piece.  I've admired Debbie Bliss's teddy because I thought the pieces were nicely shaped.  Wouldn't want to do it by machine since it's garter stitch so I "cheated" and knit it by hand.  ;=)

I combined 4 strands of thin-ish coned yarn, two of which are fuzzy.  They didn't rise to the occasion, so to speak and he doesn't look that fuzzy.  The resulting color is ok for a bear, though.  I checked out other examples of her bear on Ravelry and several said it was a "fast knit".  O MY!  I'm not a fast hand knitter, but I'm not that slow either.  Took me two weeks of nightly knitting to get him done.  Machine knitters and hand knitters have different definitions of the word "fast".  

I was faithful to the instructions except I omitted the muzzle and added a belly button.  Embroidering the face kind of gave it some shape.  Here are some more pictures of this cutie;

I think, but am not sure, that Debbie uses a machine for lots of her patterns.  Clues to me are that many things are knit flat rather than on circ needles, she gives row counts along with inches or cm's and the gauges seem to work on our machines.  Could be totally wrong, though.  I might do this  bear on the midgauge machine with stockinette and see if he turns out as nicely.  Some pieces might need to be knit upside down since changing the number of stitches so quickly is better done by decreases rather than increases.  A fairisle bear might be cute.  Her pattern is free, by the way.  There's a link on Ravelry.

Now, what should I name him???  I'm sending him to California along with some other little things for an Easter present.  Suggestions are welcome...

Machine Knit George, Peppa Pig's Brother

 A while back, I blogged about taking a coloring page of Peppa Pig and converting it to a stitch pattern in DesignaKnit. http://marzipanknits.blogspot.com/2014/10/using-dak-placing-single-motif-on-front.html        But, I don't think I showed you the end result.  First I did a pillow:

 Well, actually it's George, Peppa's brother.  I added some fairisle designs to his cheek, jacket and hat to help with floats a little. I also wrapped the edges with strands of the main color to keep it from separating.    I used new cotton dishtowels for the lining.  I find that making the lining after knitting the outside of the pillow makes for a perfect fit. I just placed the knit piece on top of the dishtowel and cut allowing for 1/2" seam.   It's stuffed with polyester material that you get at any fabric store. The lining was sewn on the sewing machine; the outside seamed by hand.

Encouraged by the results, I did a sweater, also for my grandson.

The long floats on the pillow didn't matter, but for the sweater they were bothersome.  So I bought some iron-on nylon stabilizer and affixed it to the back before sewing the sweater together.  The advantage of this nylon stuff is that it stretches with the knit a little  but keeps the floats in place.

You can kind of see on the left side where the interfacing was cut.  It's just a little larger than the fairisle pattern. You can also see where I hung a few of the floats, but it  got tiresome really fast, so I quit and opted for the interfacing.   Yes, dbj would be another way to go, but alas I'm still not doing it.

Closeup of the design.  Cute, eh?  I love how George's nose goes off to the side, kind of like a child's drawing.

And finally, proof that it fits.  Hard to get a picture of a constantly moving target!

If I were to make this again, I'd do a modified drop shoulder.  The regular drop shoulder is too bulky for a little kid.  I knew better, but sometimes the brain isn't engaged.