I’m pleased to announce that my first "cheater" bear mitten is completed!!

These things are BIG.  I happened to have my once-a-day can of Coke with me, so I included it in the picture for scale.

The only reason it is already completed is because, as I admitted in the previous post, I knit the midsection on a machine on Saturday evening — which by the time I got the 5th mitten midsection done, I had gotten the procedure down to a less-than-10-minute job.  Ah, the wonders of technology!!

Maybe it’s cheating using a machine, but I figured the bears won’t mind too much.  If you have a knitting machine gathering dust that you’ve always kind of thought you’d get around to using one day, perhaps today is the day.  Try a little stockinette – even if it’s not perfect, I bet it will make a fine bear mitten.

I knit the top of the mitten on Monday evening, and the cuff on Tuesday.  So all-in-all, not bad — for a mitten big enough to hold my smaller cat.  Here’s Mia, modeling her new sleeping bag.

(I only had one chance to get this photo, as you may imagine, and frankly I was surprised I got even one leg into the mitten, let alone most of the cat.  She’s such a jumpy little thing that I often can’t even pick her up – but this time I sneaked up on her while she was sleepy.)

The good news is, buzz about the bears is picking up:  on the KGW blog it says "Knitters Rock!" (which we knew that of course) and there is another photo of a completed mitten.  Apparently some sew-ers are getting into the act as well, with a fleece version.  Tracy Barry has promised to update the blog with info on how many mittens the zoo has received, and they may even do a follow-up story.  Absolutely fantastic!

And, I received this photo from Connie who’s obviously been busy, knitting TWO mittens.  She’s the first to receive a free Polar Bear Pattern — she chose #24, Simply Elegant Socks.  I hope she’s enjoying it!

In case you missed it on the first post, here it is again: 

As the CEO and general High Mucky-Muck of [Polar Bear Patterns ->], 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.