TessKnits.com

The title of this post may sound like the title of an adorable childrens’ book waiting to happen:  but the reality is just sad.

OK, while they aren’t exactly my favorite POLAR BEARS…  there are some Malayan Sun Bears on the other side of the globe that need some help.  Knitted help, in fact.

It seems there are some bizarre strongly held beliefs in Asia about what great things certain bear parts and bear bile can do for you, and there are people who will pay great sums of money for bear gallbladders and bile.  And since "love of money [i.e. greed] is the root of all evil", there are people who treat these poor bears very badly in order to get the bear juice.

Mind you, even though the bears are providing the raw materials, they don’t seem to get too much benefit out of the deal:

…inhumane conditions where they pass a miserable, tortured existence as living sources for bear bile, which is used in traditional medicines.

To quote an imaginary bear, "This sucks."

Fortunately, there are other people at the Animals Asia Foundation who are trying to treat the poor bears better:  they are rescuing the bears and giving them a better life.  The knitting part of the story starts with the Oregon Zoo and a PDX yarn shop called Twisted.

For more details, you can read this page at Twisted’s site and the KGW news story, or watch the KGW video, but here’s a condensed version:  One of the bear keepers at the zoo is a knitter, and she contacted Twisted and explained that, once they are rescued, these bears often need a lot of veterinary care – and for that they need to be anesthatized anaesthetized asleep, and (here’s where the knitting comes in)

they need big ol’ bear-sized mittens to keep their big ol’ bear paws warm while they snooze.

So, the people at Twisted wrote up a pattern for bear mittens!

Note it says that the yarn used must be machine washable and dryable, so "That probably means acrylic." Also, I love this part:  "…avoid boucle or other novelty yarns that might catch on bears’ claws."  How many times are you gonna see that in a knitting pattern??

It’s written for several gauges, so you have no excuse not to use up that old easy-care yarn that someone gave you "because you knit" and that’s been hanging around, embarrassed, at the back of your stash.

Oh, c’mon, you can knit with acrylic for a little bit to help out the bears, can’t you?

I’ll sweeten the deal.  As the CEO and general High Mucky-Muck of Polar Bear Patterns:  in order to show some solidarity to our Malayan ursine friends, I will offer a free Polar Bear Pattern of your choice to the first 25 people who knit even one bear mitten (and show me some kind of photographic evidence).  Two free patterns if you make a whole set of 4 mittens.

Click here to email me with your completed mitten picture, and preferred pattern choice & format:  hardcopy or email. 

I reserve the right to post the pics if I think they are funny or otherwise blog-worthy.

Because the mittens really are kind of big, and because unfortunately there is no official time limit on the project — there are thousands of bears that need rescuing — I’m dropping the end-of-March deadline.  Free patterns to the first 25 people, however long it takes you to knit one.

Let’s knit for the bears!