A little knitting knowledge...

This weekend I realized I probably have just enough knitting knowledge to start getting myself in trouble. Much like following some recipes in the kitchen, I found that for one of my latest projects I had to convince myself to stick to the pattern the first time through. At least mostly. Sometimes recipes, and apparently projects, seem... well sometimes I just want to modify them to my own techniques right away without trying the official, written instructions.

Enter Frankenbear. I thought the pattern was really cute, and although I like the variegated yarn they chose I wanted to use up some of the leftover bulky acrylic yarn from my stash. Since my Jiffy yarn was pretty colorful, I thought I could make a fair representation of the bear in a more patchwork fashion with lots of different colors. All of that sounds reasonable, even knowing that all of the color changes would mean lots of tails to work in later. Then I started reading the actual pattern that called for making the front and back of the bear separately and sewing them together at the end. Surely I could somehow convert the pattern to work in the round to avoid all of that seaming and... wait, Wait, WAIT. Danger, brain! Incorporating nine different colors and rewriting a pattern... clearly I'm at least a little insane.

So I backed off. I (somewhat) made my peace with lots of seaming, which I'm terrible at. I've seamed some and pulled it back out already because it looked terrible. So really, I suppose this is mostly a test bear. Maybe he'll teach me a magic secret to seaming. In reality, I expect I'll be disappointed with the rough edges and maybe just sew over them with a contrasting color to look like an actual Frankenbear. I decided that worst case, he'll be a sloppy but cuddly and washable toy that some future child might take pity on when he's finished. And having finished the knitting for him, next time I won't be able to resist modifying the pattern for an attempt in the round. At least I can say I tried it the way the pattern author intended at least once.