Building a Bear

Katherine's 2nd birthday party will be a teddy bear picnic birthday.  There will be teddy bears, baskets and gingham everywhere.  We'll have bear-themed food: honeydew melons, gummy bears, Teddy Grahams, beary fruit cups, little smokies, honey barbeque wings and the list goes on.  She's even going to have a teddy bear shaped cake.  In keeping with the theme, I decided to knit her a teddy bear.  I've never knitted a stuffed animal before.  (Well, I made my nephew Aiden a weird monster dude thing a few years ago but it wasn't as involved as a teddy bear.)  I searched patterns on Ravelry and found one that I liked.  There are a lot of ugly teddy bears out there and there are also a lot of teddy bears with strange complicated patterns.  The pattern I settled on was the Diamond Jubilee Bear.  The bear is absolutely adorable.  The bear wears a crown because it was designed for Queen Elizabeth's 60-year celebration.  Initially I decided to not make the crown for Katherine's teddy bear.  Now, however, it will depend on when I get the bear done.  I have made a few adjustments already.  The pattern calls for size 3 knitting needles.  For you non-knitters out there, that is size super tiny.  I started over twice.  The second time I started over I switched to a size 5 needle.  Size 5 needles are still tiny but are a little bit more manageable for me.  I'm almost half-way done with the teddy bear's head.  I need to get moving or, to be more accurate, knitting.  I have two arms, two legs, the body, 4 paw pads and the nose to knit before September 8th.  Right now I knit during my lunch hour but can usually only knit 2 rows due to time constraints and my hands starting to hurt (because of the needle size).  I want to work on the bear in the evenings as well.  Even if I only knit 1 row at a time during stolen moments, it will be better than nothing.  Now I know all of my knitting friends are wondering what brand of yarn and what colors I chose.  I'm happy to share that information.  The pattern did not give a brand of yarn or on second look, it did: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK... whatever that it is.  On the actual pattern, it doesn't list any specific yarn so I choose Caron Simply Soft because it had colors I liked and it was on sale at Michael's.  For the body of the bear the pattern said light brown, so I chose Bone.  Yes, the color is called Bone and no, I didn't know that when I bought it.  It's a very nice tan color.  The paw pads are a darker brown.  The color I chose is Chocolate and looks very similar in color to, you guessed it, chocolate.  I also bought some black yarn for the nose.

Wish me luck during this adventure!  I'll try to post pictures and updates during this process.