Polar Bears

Today I was in the West Island section (page 23) of the Montreal Gazette. I was called by the Gazette last Thursday and they tried to come out on Thursday evening to my knit-a-long that I hosted at the shop, but they couldn’t get a photographer. They were able to get one for the next day, during my 4th knit-a-long at the shop for this project. The whole idea was that we were going to get the community together to knit these bears, I would have them on display in my shop for a brief period of time, and then we will donate them to charity. The West Island Women’s Shelter will be taking a large portion of them, and then the rest, we will either try to find another charity to donate them to, or I’ve had requests to sell them, and then give the proceeds to charity. I will see how many are leftover after the shelter takes them. My goal is to have 100 bears. I have given out over 120+ kits with the pattern (which we adapted from another free pattern we found, but I made some changes to it to look more bear like) and gave enough yarn (in either white or off white, some of which one of my suppliers donated (to fill the first 70 kits), the rest (about 50 kits now), I donated from either my personal yarn stash and some from the shop too). From the over 120+ kits that I handed out, I have already received just over 50 bears back, completed. They are all so cute, and each have their own personality! Here are some that I have made:

These two above, are little ones I made, to test out the pattern. The first one, on the left, was made using the original pattern that I found for free online. I wasn’t 100% happy with the face, so I made the one on the right, which was test number 2.

Above, is teenage bear. I used some very thick yarn (Bravo Big by SMC) on 10mm needles to knit this guy up.

And this is Mama bear. I used SMC Bravo Big with the yarn held doubled on 15 mm needles to knit her up. She is awesome. I just love her. You can see below, how much bigger she is from the teenage bear. You can also see in the image at the top of this post, that was in the newspaper today, her size compared to the little baby bears.

I really hope this project brings smiles to children’s faces. That was the plan from the beginning, when I decided to launch this project. I cannot wait to see the entire project finished. I have 2 more bears that need to be completed, I have been playing around with different textures of white yarn to create the bears. I will definitely post a picture of the display once all the bears are up.