Sunday 10th December - Advent 2 Craft - knitting bears

Glove/finger puppet bears

The instructions are going to be a bit approximate, so please 'bear' with me (apologies!)

Here the are, all four-and-a-half of them;

The brown and pale blue bears were given to me many years ago to use when teaching piano. They came into their own when I was teaching younger children on zoom. I would put the puppets on, and I could just about play , so that I could really show exactly what each hand was doing.

It takes me about a day, off and on, to knit half a bear.

 

Firstly I had a good look at the original bears, measured them, and tried to count stitches and rows.

This is a summary of my notes; the measurements are roughly right, but I doubt if you could work out the instructions in any detail.

I felt that my first go at knitting a bear, that's the dark blue one with the red scarf, came out a bit short, and a bit fat, especially for a child.

The 'half bear' was knitted using the same yarn and needles, and I think he'll be about right. You need two pieces, front and back.

Using aran yarn, and 6.5mm needles (because that's what I had to hand) cast on 12 stitches.

Knit until you have 12 ridges on each side. That's about 24 rows.

Arms

Cast on 7 stitches at the end of a row (I used knitted, or cable, cast-on) 19 stitches total. Make a note to your self which arm you have just created. Use a stitch marker, or just make sure you know which side the tail from the original cast-on is.

Knit back across all 19 stitches, and cast on 7 stitches at the end of the row. 26 Stitches in total.

Knit 3 rows or so; 

The important thing is that you are now about to cast off 7 stitches at the beginning of the row, and you want this to be the same arm as the one you started with. Otherwise teddy is going to have one very fat arm and one thin arm.

If this is the correct row, cast off 7 stitches (19 left in total, one of the RH needle and 18 on the LH needle - took me a while to work this out!)

Knit the rest of the row.

Next row, cast off 7 stitches (you should be back to 12 in total)

Head

Knit about 10 ridges - roughly 20 rows.

Bind off. 

Sew up, leaving the bottom open for your hand.

Ears

Sew across a diagonal and pull tight to bunch up the corner. Secure the thread without letting it work slack. It takes quite a chunk of the corner to get a decent sized ear - check before you secure the end in case you want to alter it.

Face - using some dark yarn, sew the eyes, nose and ears. Check the picture at the top for placement. Make sure you don't sew the back and the front together (very annoying), and also, if your bear is made from lighter yarn, try and avoid the stitches showing through to the front when you go from one feature to the next.

Scarf; cast on enough stitches of yarn (depends on yarn and needles, but 60 stitches of double knitting would be about right), knit a couple of rows - 5 for dk - and bind off. 

Secure scarf  with matching yarn at the cross over. The original bears had the overlap stitched down, and a few stitches securing the scarf to the body just a little way along the neck, either side of the button.

Finger puppet

Thickish double knitting, or maybe thinnish aran, 5mm needles.

Try casting on 9 stitches, knitting 9 ridges. Arms had 5 stitches each, and were about 4 rows thick.

Head was 6 ridges.