Bella Bear....

The final holiday gift is complete (and the angels sang). In all truthfulness, making this little bear puppet was not as difficult as I had feared. However, the gauge is all wrong. I actually knit a swatch and checked the gauge for this project (am I admitting that I don't always??? Maybe.) But the swatch must have lied as the body of the puppet is entirely to large. If I ever make this again, I'll decrease the number of body stitches by 12-15. When tried on by DH, his hand was even to small. I'm thinking it can still be played with and used as a sleep toy as is, but my I'd like to see the hands that this was meant for - I'm talking Goliath sized hands.

I changed several things about the look of the pattern. As you can see in the picture below, I did not make a Jingle Bear (I will at some point though as I think it's cute as can be.) I figured that the child receiving the bear can get more play time with Bella in her magenta and flowered outfit than in Christmas colors. The flowers are little felted buttons that I found at the craft store. I did not intend to use them on this project, but the muse brought them to me and said to jazz the outfit up a bit (I listen to muse about such things, mostly.)

The pattern came from an extra toy section that was included with the October 2010 Let's Knit magazine. There are numerous other little knitted toys in the booklet and none of them look difficult. I never intended to make knitted toys, but now I know that they aren't so bad to work up (at least not these) so I might challenge myself again in future.

Now it is time to wrap the final three gifts - bake one more batch of cookies - watch the bunnies play in the backyard and share a lovely Christmas with my dearest and best friend, DH - Dave.

Peace and joy to you all now and in the new year....
The Green Girl