A Problem Shared...

is a problem solved! Remember yesterday when I mentioned that the front of the body I'd knitted for teddy was way smaller than it seemed like it should be? Well, during my afternoon break at work yesterday I was about to start knitting the back of teddy's body, when it occured to me that perhaps a moment spent re-studying the pattern might help. And I sort of had a 'eureka' moment when I thought perhaps I had solved the problem of why teddy was a tad on the tiny side. However, being such a complete amateur at this knitting pattern lark, I needed some back-up and so emailed The Knitting Doctor (who would usually have been at work and thus available for a face-to-face consultation, but was on this particular day at home nursing a poorly ankle caused by falling out of her mother's van [and she wasn't even drunk at the time]). TKD confirmed my suspicions and thus when I went home that evening I was able to astound my mother with my knitting-pattern-reading prowess and was also able to knit one half of a proper sized teddy body. Yay!

By the way, for those of you who haven't fallen in to a knitting-induced coma, the part in bold is the bit of the pattern that had me flumoxed:

"Cont in garter st and inc 1 st at each end of next row and 6 foll 6th rows"

At first I took it to mean that I should increase one stitch at each end of the following six rows and that would be that; but on second viewing (and with a stumpy bear part to show for it), I realised that it meant I should increase one stitch at each end on every sixth row, six times. So, first time round poor teddy was approx 30 rows shorter in the body than he should have been...

Left side is bear as he should be; right side is bear as he shouldn't be.