Irish Bear

I finished this guy up just before the Super Bowl. I'm working on getting the St. Patrick's Day holiday box ready to mail and he seemed like he'd be a good addition.

The pattern comes from an out of print American School of Needlework Crochet Pairs of Bears #1182 for those of you who may want to look for it. The original bears are much smaller. The pattern calls for them to be made from sport weight yarn and a C hook. This did not work for my plan so I used worsted weight 4 yarn and a g hook. I liked the outcome. I still have the Mrs. to make but I have time as I write this on Super Bowl Sunday and the kids likely are still playing with the Valentine items I sent.

The most challenging parts I found were the jacket and the tail. I didn't get the tail quite right so it doesn't actually stick out of the hole in the pants the way it is supposed to as it is too flat. The jacket finally came out but it took me two tries before I was sure I had it right. I chose to sew the buckles on rather than use felt as suggested in the pattern. I didn't want stuff coming off with little hands.

St. Patrick's Day Bear

This is the first project in a while that I really wanted to keep. I fell in love with this little fellow. However, he will be making his way to his new home after his new owner gets into her new home.

I found this free pattern here while searching for a bear pattern for this project. I was going to purchase this one here as it comes as a complete set, but when I started this project it hadn't been released as a single pattern. It was only available as a set and I didn't want the rest of the patterns in the set. Perhaps it will work for next year if I'm still doing these. Then again he's cute enough I might want one of each of these for my house.

Now for my notes, I started doing this project in worsted weight acrylic yarn and even with a smaller hook the bear was huge. For my house it might make a cool decoration. For the child it is going to it would have been a monster. So, I used Knit Picks cotton sport weight yarn I had left over from making the Christmas bib and the yarn I'd hoped to make a St. Patrick's day bib with to make the toy. I believe there is a mix of the Cotton Sports comfort and shine.

The hat came from two other free patterns as clearly the bear pattern was just the cute bear and his shorts. The hat can be found here. The buckles can be found at the same designer different article here. The biggest change was hook size to get it to match my bear's head, but you will have to adjust to fit it to your bear as needed.

An additional note about the pants these are constructed making the pant legs first and connecting them to form the pants. You will want to make sure the legs fit over the bears legs before continuing. After crocheting tightly making the ami, my stitches were too tight making the first leg and the pant leg would not fit over the bears leg. I had to make a second one watching myself to ensure I did not crochet too tightly. The second two worked fine. I generally prefer to work from the waist down and split the crotch making the legs that way, however with the stripes it worked better using this method. The shorts really were adorable. The light green had been used on some Christmas projects and was left over. I had just enough to finish the shorts without digging into another skein.