The weather is glorious today - yes, that is typical Cornwall (4 seasons in one day) - so all my regulars are probably trying to tidy up their gardens. I've had some lovely visitors in though - who are most grateful for the weather improvement and very glad to see a nice wool shop - we love meeting people and hearing about where they live and their hols in the south-west.
As a result of all of the above, it's gone a bit quiet this afternoon so - teddy update, as promised.
As I've mentioned before, I've had no formal design training so I tend to chart/measure/fiddle until I get what I want. Inevitably, this leads to some disasters and quite a lot of tinking but, sometimes, it works out how I plan it. My first efforts were simple handbags for Cornish Organic:
and then: a fairly simple sweater and hat.
Note: I did not design the sheep!
But I did get into the sheep theme. This tea cosy was designed in the car outside a gym one cold dark winter when T was training hard! (Just try charting that out behind a steering wheel - at times the language was fruity)
The tea cosy is the most popular pattern we've every done - we've sold hundreds. The next most popular is this stole (modelled by our good friend Jules).
Then along came colours to the Cornish Organic range and things hotted up!:
and then we met Tina Barrett and she took over the "big stuff" and I took on the smaller "quirky" stuff.
So, everyone kept saying we should make a teddy bear and I started in the usual way - chart out the pieces and then start knitting, writing up each line as I go (very time consuming!). Again, some was done in the car outside the gym, the rugby pitch and the hockey pitch and gradually he came together. So I dyed the paws and hands, worked out the joints, sewed him up and then he sat and looked at me and I kept thinking "he doesn't look right, something's not looking right" and then it struck me - the tops of his legs and arms were all wrong. All completely and utterly wrong and, once I'd spotted it, it bugged me to death.
What to do? He's all stuffed and sewn up and virtually finished. Do I:
a) take his head off, unstuff him, take the joints apart, take the legs and arms off, unpick the tops of all 4, re-knit them (re-writing the patten as I go), replace the joints, re-stuff and sew the head back on or do I:
b) cheat. Unpick the tops of the legs and arms in situ, tink back the outside piece of each limb, re-knit (re-writing the pattern as I go), carefully sew back together putting the excess knitting of the inside piece of each limb inside with the stuffing.
I chose b). I know, I know - a real perfectionist would go for a) because option b) would keep them awake at night but, come on chaps, I do have another life and, honestly, you'd never know. I know and I am managing to sleep fine so please don't lose any sleep on my behalf, OK.
Currently I have one arm left to go - actually I have half an arm left as I tinked back one and then went to bed. Again, true perfectionists wouldn't have been able to sleep with a knitting needle half way up one arm with the stuffing falling out but, guys, I need to sleep, right? And a true perfectionist would have gone for option a) so I don't count now.
T has declared that "actually - he's a pretty good teddy, Mum" - which is pretty high praise in my house so I'm chuffed.
This weekend he'll get his ears attached (they're on my bedside cabinet - slovenly, I know) and a waistcoat knitted - if he's lucky - and I get the end of year accounts written up - see, I do have another life!
No comments:
Post a Comment