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...