Merrily We Knit Along....

The Tivoli t-top is coming along. I slipped half of the stitches onto another needle and tried it on yesterday just before starting the front & back darts.



For having to rework the pattern to fit the gauge of this yarn, I think it's coming along quite well. If it doesn't work as a t-top in the warm weather, it will make a great vest over a turtleneck for winter.

While digging through my patterns, I came upon the one for my little bear that hangs by my computer.



The pattern was originally from either Family Circle or Woman's Day, but I've reworked it to give the bear a shorter muzzle (the first ones I made looked more like wolves than bears!), ears that are not worked separately plus a few other tweaks. I'm going to post a link to my pattern in the sidebar. He's about 5½" tall and makes a cute Christmas tree ornament. I have a grapevine wreath wrapped in red & green plaid ribbon with about 8 of the little guys in various shades of brown that goes on the door every winter and probably a dozen of the polar bear variety that go on the tree.

Pioggia asked last week if a raglan could be knit from the bottom up rather than top down as I'm making the yellow one. The answer is certainly - it's the slanting sleeve seams that go from the underarm to the neckline that create the raglan styling and more patterns are designed for knitting from the bottom up than the other way around. I tend to rework patterns to eliminate seams and when I make a raglan this way starting at the bottom there are a few rows after the sleeves have been joined to the body where there are too many stitches in too small a space that makes it rough on my hands. That doesn't happen when starting at the neckline so I tend to search out that type of pattern.