Pattern Summary Deady bear is a stuffed toy. Poor bear got killed by a bee, and the bee still has his stinger in him. That’ll teach those bears to stay out of the honey.

This toy can really be made with any appropriate yarn/needle combination. It’s up to you what size you want your bear to be. If you want it smaller, go with a sport weight yarn and smaller needles. The bear is quite large when knit with worsted weight yarn. While I can’t recall the exact size, it was probably somewhere around 20 inches. So, when you are ready to stuff, make sure you have enough fiberfill to fill the bear up. You won’t need a full bag of fiberfill by any means, but it definitely requires handfuls of the stuff.

Less than one skein was used for each of the six colors, and many far less than that. It’s a pretty good stash-busting exercise, actually, although you will need a fairly full skein of the main bear color. Many of the smaller pieces, such as the wings and the yellow of the bee body required less than 12 yards each. Overall, I would estimate the entire project takes less than 300 yards.

Additional Gauge information Gauge is not terribly important for this piece; however, given the nature of a stuffed animal, you do not want the stitches to be too loose. Having fiberfill come out of your stitches isn’t fun. It probably wouldn’t hurt to use needles smaller than size 7, but I went with the recommended needle size for the yarn I had.

Needles Used This pattern requires needles that can be used to knit flat as well as in the round. Whether you want to use double points and straights or double points and circulars is up to you.

Official intro from Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch This stuffed bear really is stuffed--as in taxidermy. His “X” eyes make it clear that the be that stung him (and remains stuck in his body, leaving a pool of blood) did him in. But no matter. Even in death, he’s still super-cuddly and ready to shock friends and family whether he’s perched on a pillow or displayed on a shelf. Perfect for the urban toy collector in your life, he’s a pretty quick knit, and the parts aren’t terribly difficult to seam up. If you have the appropriate colors on hand, he’s also an excellent stash-busting exercise.

ERRATA

It was brought to my attention that there are some issues with the pattern, so here are the errata for you. Both errors occur in the muzzle section of the pattern. If you find any other issues, please let me know.

• First typo, muzzle section: Row 3,5, and 7 should just read Row 3.

• Missing row, muzzle section: Row 15 is missing from the pattern. After looking at an image in the book (I no longer have the original bear) and reknitting the pattern, you should treat Row 17 as Row 15, and Row 19 as Row 17. Therefore, the muzzle will be 17 rows long.