Why I've Been MIA This Week...

You might remember this post, where I shared the frog I knitted for Amy's teacher as an end of year gift. After I finished Freida, I started to work on the project I'd planned for Jessica's teacher. She is retiring this year after 28 years of teaching. She must have started when she was in her tweens because she is still very young, in my opinion. I had asked Jessica to ask her teacher what her favorite animal was and after a few tries, I found out that one animal she really likes is the polar bear. This was terrific as I had just found a pattern for a knitted baby polar bear! It took some time for me to find the right yarn. I had wanted to use the yarn I got from Susan at MaryJane's Tearoom, but I couldn't find a coordinating color in the right weight. I found some Sinfonia yarn at Hobby Lobby that had all the colors I wanted and it was the cotton type I was looking for. I've been working on it fairly consistently, but with the end of the year quickly approaching I decided to devote most of my time to the project this week. I am happy to share that I completed the project this morning! Yay!

I'd like to share with you, Candy (which is the name on the pattern):

Here she is sitting pretty on the teacart. I must apologize for the not so great photos. It's been awfully dreary in my neck of the woods (you might have heard that we had 2-3 inches of snow on the ground yesterday morning) and the sun wasn't cooperating when I took these shots.

Standing up now,  you can see a peek of her legs below the dungarees and above the oh so cute shoes and socks.

It was harder than I thought to get a good shot of her standing up!

I chose safety eyes and I even found a plastic nose...anything to avoid doing a lot of embroidery on yarn, although I did attempt a mouth this time. 

Here's the bib on her dungarees (love that word!) I did embroider that lazy daisy stitch and I didn't even have to look up how to make it. I remembered how all on my own. Yay, me. Her jumper (sweater) is a fun stripe pattern.

The straps even cross over on the back side. Here you can see the stripes a little better on her jumper.

Let me tell you, doing one part of the dungarees was an exercise in endurance...I had 121 stitches on my shortish needle and I had to knit 21 rows with 121 stitches on each row. But it was definitely worth it, I think! I'm just amazed I got it done and didn't procrastinate on that part. LOL

Love the little bow on her ear...

And the bows on her shoes. These bows were fun to make. And so were the shoes and socks.  They are one piece! Love that!

One last view so you can see her sort of okay looking mouth. She looks a little shy, but all in all, I think she came out pretty sweet.

And if you haven't figured it out by now, I got the pattern here at MaryJane's Tearoom. If her shop isn't open when you stop by, you may want to hop over to Ravelry and sign up(it's free). You can find the pattern there, too. I just love the adorable animals that Susan comes up with! They are fun to knit (not too complicated at all) and have such adorable personalities!

I sure hope Jessica's teacher will like her!

In addition to working on this, the school is having Walking and Wheeling week this week (even though it's been rather, shall we say, less than spring like). I'm helping out passing out healthy snacks to the kids who are participating. We also had skate night at the local roller rink to celebrate W/W week and the girls really wanted me to come along, so I did. It was a lot of fun. Jessica has Daisies this week and a field trip on Saturday to a local fire station. Guess you could say we are in a whirlwind of end of school year activities. LOL 

Thanks for stopping by. I sure appreciate your visits. I hope to make it back here soon, but if the weather cooperates, I really need to work on the weed patch garden to prepare it for planting this year's flowers.