We interrupt this blog for some beary important news

The pentagon sleeves project is still on hold and the popoki shawl's triangle solution is on target but stalled as a local baby boom has distracted me and put me on a plush toy knitting path after a long lapse.

Before I came back to knitting I was doing a lot of soft sculpture pieces. As a result, a lot of my early knitting was all about exploring sculptural pieces from other people's knitting patterns.

My plush toy knitting kick had knitted chickens, bunnies and bears flying off the needles on a regular basis. While I still have a few knitted animal parts (notably a kangaroo that looks more like a dinosaur IMO) kicking around in the knitting/studio room, the vast majority of the things I knit went to family and friends near and far.


I've known the parents of one of the babies since their days at Cafe on Park.

While I knit a lot of bears and other things for people at Cafe on Park, somehow Rene, Johnny & Michele didn't end up with any knitted swag and although they have always been on the to-be-knit for list they've never quite made it to the top of the list.

Babies, of course, change everything. And while I'm still trying to come up with a project for Rene that is not all about Rene as mom, for now I'm back into knitting bears from Toy Knits.

Johnny is not just a great judge of wine and women, he's also a musician, so I got it into my head that functional or not, blue suede booties would be a good choice. The early experiment in Berroco Suede is too totally cute also probably totally non-functional. It is adapted from the Party Pumps pattern in Kid's Knits.

Also not very functional is the Lion Brand Suede bear in progress. Originally conceived as a bear for baby Oliver, my gauge is making this more of a mama bear project that Oliver can grow into. Which, of course means I'll just have to start another bear as soon as this one is off the needles (if not before).

So here's a picture of Ursa in progress: