Tag: Polar bear

The Misfit

Who is that lurking in the back?

For the last couple of months, I’ve had a zip lock pouch in my bag that held everything I needed to make ‘The Misfit’. A cross stitch pattern kit from Heritage Crafts. I ended up stitching a polar bear hiding in a bunch of penguins. The kit has eight colours of floss, but by occasionally using two different colours in the same stitch they manage to achieve ten different colour combinations. You start with all the cross stitches and then you define the animals by adding the back stitch.

Embroidery of penguins and a polar bear without backstitch
Cross stitched penguins and one polar bear
Picture frame with cross stitched penguins and one polar bear

After I finished all the cross stitches, you could sort of see the critters starting to appear, but by gradually adding the back stitch you can really see them come alive. I didn’t finish this in a few sittings, this thing went all over the country with me since October. It’s small and flat enough to bring anywhere and easy enough to pick back up at any time. I finally finished it on December 20th and have now framed it and it’s hanging on my wall with some of my other cross stitch projects.

Polar Bear

Recently, I got a free pattern in my e-mail inbox of the cutest little polar bear, courtesy of Claire Garland. It can be found here. On Friday the 9th, I decided that it was imperative that I made the little polar bear. So I set off to find the ball of white furry yarn that I remembered I had, somewhere. I also got some thicker white yarn that was also required. I did not follow the gauge or yarn thickness as stated on the pattern at all and just wing it.

I finished the back of the bear up to the front legs on Friday and set out to finish it on Saturday. The furry bits have the thicker white and the fur yarn held together. I did manage to finish the entire knitting and most of the sewing. When I’d finished all the instructions it didn’t really hold the right shape, but it took a few days to get around to stitching him down so that he held his shape correctly.

There’s only one real deviation from the pattern, and that is that I used a dog-nose for the tip of his face instead of stitching. I’m not sure what I’ll do with him, so we’ll see where he ends up. He’s quite adorable though.