Wow! I absolutely LOVE this bear! The pattern is quite amazing and ingenious. At first I found the pattern VERY confusing as it is not written the way I have ever seen a knitting pattern written, but once you figure out the writing style it quite brilliant! I followed the pattern exactly, except for the edging of the feet as I just couldn’t figure out what the designer was talking about, but she had an alternative method listed, so I used that, and it looks fine :-)
The yarn i used is pretty awesome. Very good value and is machine washable, which is a real bonus as this is for a baby who arrived safely last week :-) I tried my best to match up the colour changes to keep the bears limbs looking even, and I almost succeeded :-)
This bear has been a real hit with my little niece, so I decided to make another one for her and just ordered the yarn.
I used 3.25mm dpns (even though the pattern suggests you use the “magic loop” method, but because all the little bits are so small and fiddly using the magic loop method seemed like a whole lot of extra work and quite redundant at most points in the pattern, but to each their own :-) ) So, using much smaller needles than would normally be called for with DK weight yarn, I got a nice tight fabric, and the unstuffed bear was quite small, which I quite liked… but when I stuffed it it GREW and GREW! It ended up being about 33cm tall (13”), just in case anyone else was wondering how big or small their bear might be with the same combination of yarn and needle size :-) I will deliver this bear to baby George soon and I hope Vera is well loved!