Mother Bear Madness

The January/February Mother Bear Kal/Cal is in full swing in my household. For my first mother bear, I used the knitting in the round pattern, but at the same time, I also purchased the pattern for seamless crochet. It is the crochet that I've been focusing on so far (though I admittedly knitted the scarf). I have the first bear of the year finished (my second mother bear overall).

After careful deliberation, I'm calling him Smee.

Smee started out as a pair of blue jeans with gray feet sticking out of the bottom.

The process of connecting the two legs was, in a word, magical. I had never crocheted seamlessly before and the idea that you could just connect two legs together with a single crochet and keep going was so stupidly simple it didn't seem like it would work. Until it did.

That the pattern was toe-up, essentualy, meant that things got really strange when I finished the body. There was Smee: sans head. Adjusting this pattern to finish at that point might work really well for Halloween decorations. I found it equal parts amusing and disturbing. I kept having the voice of Johnny Depp circa Sleepy Hollow play through my head: "A horseman. Headless."

 I'm already halfway through my third bear now, who is as-yet nameless. Looking at Smee beside my first mother bear, Stubby of the too-short-legs, I discover I really do like the short legs better. This third mother bear has a leg length somewhere in between Stubby and Smee. I also prefer the look of the knitted bear to the crochet, though the crochet goes by much faster, and a solid body color to the addition of different colors for pants and shirt. These are things to keep in mind for future bears.

These two, along with the pending third bear and maybe a few more besides, will be shipped off to Minnesota and then to Africa to find their future owners in a form of a little boy or girl in need of love and comfort that bears are good at providing.