Aaargghh!

Sigh.

Remember how I wanted to knit something for my new great-nephew Parker, who was born in May and lives in San Francisco?  Because his parents - wonderful people that they are - do not really appreciate knitted things, I didn't want to go out of my way to create an "heirloom."  So I decided to make a toy.  First, I decided to make Susan B. Anderson's Elefante.  Got all ready to do that, and decided it was too fiddly, and since it involved crochet at the end, and I don't know how to crochet, that was problematic.

But then I remembered - I had this pattern!  Perfect, right?  Well, I grabbed some yarn that would work well for it, and took off.  Then, there was an interruption when my osteoarthritis flared up in my right hand and it was hard for me to knit.  But, then I picked it up again.  Turned out, it was slightly fiddly, but I got it all knit.  Over the weekend, I went to stuff it.  Uh oh.

It looked, in a word, craptastic.  As in, awful.  I had followed the pattern as written, but had somehow managed to get the arms to be too big, and not level with each other, and the legs looked bizarre, as they were long and skinny!  Instead of a cute little teddy bear, it looked like a teddy bear that had been in a terrible accident, and re-created from found random teddy parts.

Aaargghh!!!  I decided to cut my losses, and unraveled it, hoping that someday the yarn can be something else.  And, well, back to the drawing board.

At the moment, I think that I will be knitting two pumpkin hats - one for a new baby (Doughboy's new baby brother), and one for Parker (oh I might as well make three, and send one to James, the "big brother" to the new baby ...).  I've made quite a few pumpkin hats, and they have always turned out.  Let's hope that record stays intact.

If for some reason it doesn't ... it might be time for a store-bought gift and a nice card.

I'll keep you posted ... :-)