February 20, 2015
Dear Everyone:
I made my first Bear this week.
A few weeks ago I received an email from a shop in
Walnut Creek that
sells high-end yarn for people who are really serious about
knitting.
Or crocheting. This
is the place you go to when you want to make something really nice and
don’t mind spending hundreds of dollars on a single project.
Most of my projects, of course, don’t require such expensive materials.
When you’re making a pair of slippers, or “bed-socks” as “Alice”
calls them, you choose something that will wear well on the floor.
And won’t wear out in just a few weeks.
On the other hand, if you really want a pair of slippers that feel like
you’re wearing boneless kittens on your feet,
alpaca is the way to go
and this shop is the place to find lots of really good alpaca.
Not that there is such a thing as “bad” alpaca.
But I digress.
The shop was advertising an “event” for “Mother Bear Project”.
This is a non-profit organization that supports making little
Bears for little people in emerging nations.
Mostly children suffering from
HIV/AIDS in
Africa.
The idea is: You buy the
pattern, knit or crochet something that looks vaguely like a Teddy Bear,
then send the Bear, along with “Bear Fare”, to the non-profit and they
send the Bear(s) to kids who need them.
Everybody wins.
Especially the Project which makes money on the patterns and the $3.00
“Fare” to pay for shipping and “handling” (i.e., getting it into the
country in question.)
And the shop makes money on people who buy the knitting needles, or
crochet hooks, and yarn and patterns and may even pay to learn how to
knit and/or crochet. They
also provide a “drop-off” point for finished Bears.
Which gets you into the shop and possibly buying more yarn, etc.
Although in our case, the shop only sold us two patterns, one for
knitting and one for crocheting.
“Jeannie” has whole cases filled with knitting needles and yarn.
And I have plenty of hooks and a large plastic bin holding many,
many skeins and balls of yarn left over from previous projects.
Whenever you start a project you always buy “enough” yarn to complete
the project. If you run out
before you’re finished the chances of finding more yarn of the exact
same dye lot are miniscule at best.
Also, if a project calls for 4-½ skeins of yarn, you can’t
actually buy half a skein.
So you buy five skeins and you have a half-skein leftover.
Or, more likely, you buy six skeins, just in case, and have 1-½
skeins left.
If the project uses more than one color, the whole thing expands into
multiple balls of yarn because you need “just 100 yards” of each color.
Hence, lots of leftover yarn.
Just the thing for making a Bear.
The pattern even calls for “fist-size balls” in three colors.
So I got the pattern. Next
step: Deciphering the
instructions.
Knitting and crocheting instructions are always written for the
convenience of the writer, filled with puzzling abbreviations and
skipped steps that show up later.
Example: “Rounds 3,
5, 7 & 8, change to TC, ch 1, sc in each stitch around, sl st to join.
Rounds 4 & 6, with PC ch 2, dc in each stitch around, sl st to
join.”
The printed instructions, clearly marked “PLEASE DO NOT COPY THIS
PATTERN”, as the proceeds go to the Mother Bear Project, cover two
pages, back-to-back. Once I
translated it all into English, the instructions, which now made sense,
took up four pages.
It really is a simple pattern, consisting of only one, single-crochet
stitch throughout, to make.
In retrospect, making the Bear’s head and paws with a cream colored yarn
might not have been the best idea.
What will an African child make of a Bear with “white” skin?
But this, after all, was a “practice piece”.
And I learned a great deal from it.
For instance, I learned that it’s better to
embroider the face on BEFORE
you fill the head with stuffing.
My first attempt resulted in something that can best be described
as a particularly psychotic-looking
scarecrow.
Not exactly comforting for a sick child.
You don’t want your first attempt to send kids screaming from the
room.
So I pulled out all the face stitching and redid it until it looked a
lot friendlier. Even
Bear-like. After all, as
Admiral Kirk said (just before they
demoted him back to mere Captain):
“We learn by doing.”
And I have LOTS more yarn. I
think my next Bear will have dark gray paws and head, green pants and a
pink shirt. Call it a
Rainbow Bear.
Love, as always,
Pete
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