It's Not A Polar Bear!

Sainsburys are selling these cute little Christmas ornaments ostensibly as polar bears.  As I stood in the supermarket aisle banging on to Mr. B about how it wasn't a polar bear as the bone structure of the skull was all wrong, it was definitely a brown/grizzly bear, he put it in the trolley to buy for me.  So I can paint it the right colours....

Selling Like Hot Cakes...

...or something like that.  Third one this week, available in my Etsy shop.

Just made prints of this one available on Society6 - they can be seen here.

Polar Bear...

I knitted a polar bear - it's the same pattern as the brown bear I made last week, but due to the stretchiness of the Snowflake yarn, he is about twice the size!  He's also quite fat but that makes him cuddly.  Love this pattern, it takes just a couple of evenings to make.

Pretty Plush Polar Bear...

 Sometimes it is fun to do something completely different.  I've been knitting for so long this year that my hands are very stiff and painful, and while I still enjoy knitting, I felt it was time to have a little change.  I saw this pattern in the latest edition of Simply Sewing magazine and thought I'd like to give it a go.

 I used a couple of pieces of vintage wool blanket that has been felted, bought at a craft fair a couple of years ago.  I also decided to completely hand sew this - I can use a sewing machine but find it hard to control when making smaller items.  Just as well I did as some layers (ears & tail) were almost 2cm thick!

 The pattern had the bear embroidered with snowflakes - well, I didn't want to do that, I like a bit of realism.  So I looked up some pictures of polar bears feet and gave him some little pads instead, plus embroidered claws on his front paws.

 I like him a lot - he's very firmly stuffed, making him quite a substantial toy.

 Now all I need to do is find him a good home - any volunteers?

Made the first mince pies of the season last week - delicious!

Hope & A Bear...

 As always happens, I think I have so much to do on a painting and then suddenly it is finished.  I completed this yesterday morning, so it is now ready to be packed up and sent to Greece.  This was done in a mixture of watercolour and coloured pencils - I started off with Derwent Drawing Pencils, but ended up using a selection of all the coloured pencils I have in order to get the depth of colour I needed.

So in the afternoon I spent an hour or so on this little watercolour of a polar bear.  I used a photo I'd taken from the Explore.org polar bear cams for inspiration.  This is now for sale in my Etsy shop, cheaper than my usual work - might make a nice Christmas present?