Welcome!

Welcome to Katie J. and Katie O.'s teddy bear knitalong! As we're both pregnant and looking for cute baby things to make, we thought we'd try bears. We'd love for other knitters to join us, because after all, who doesn't love a teddy bear?

Here are some ideas for bear patterns. Katie O. is using a pattern from The Knitted Teddy Bear by Sandra Polley. Katie J. is knitting the Stars and Stripes bear from Teddy Bears by Debbie Bliss. Both books have great-looking bears, so if you have one of these in your pattern library, you're already set.

If you want to try looking for a free pattern online, here are a few we've found:

"Little Teddy" (no photo)

Mr. Bean style bear

Teddy Bear by Rita Taylor (no photo)

And here are two free patterns for a bear sweater:

About.com's pattern

Brown Sheep's pattern

The Rules

Basically, there are no rules. This is supposed to be fun, and we're going into the holidays soon, so we'd like to keep it as loose as possible. If you'd like to participate, please let us know by commenting to any entry on this blog. Send us your name, your blog URL, and the pattern you plan to use. We'll list your blog here under the "Participants" sidebar. Copy the knitalong button (to your left) to your hard drive, upload it to your own server, then post it on your blog so that other knitters can see that you're doing this knitalong. Keep your blog updated as to your progress, and try to finish by the end of January 2005. That's it. We'll post updates to this blog as we can, regarding the group's progress as a whole.

That's about it! So, let's make some new bear friends!