Winter Woollies

Today I am going to show you how Polar made jumpers for me and for my friend Hanley.  She says bear jumpers are easy to make because somebody else has done the knitting already.  This is because our jumpers are made from her old socks!

Old socks can be very smelly, so make sure you use a pair that have been freshly washed, dried and aired before you try to make a jumper out of them.  They should also have stopped being useful to your human friend as socks.  This might be because the elastic that holds the sock up has stopped being twangy, so the socks fall down and get tangled around inside your human friend's shoes or boots, or your human friend might have worn big holes in the foot of the sock, which is what Polar usually does.  She repairs them for a while but, eventually, there is not enough toe sock left to stitch.  

Polar says we should not waste socks and clothes.  She says we should repair things or, if they are in good order but don't fit us, or if we don't like them any more due to a strange thing humans have called 'fashion', we should give them away to people who don't have enough clothes of their own.

Because we are quite small bears, the top of one grown-up sock is enough to make the body of our jumpers.  The top of the sock makes the neck.  You cut the foot off of the sock and make a double hem along the bottom, using lots of stitches so it does not run or fray.  You use the other sock to make the sleeves, cutting the tube made from the top of the sock to the length of your animal friend's arm, plus the width of two wide seams.  Cut that in half, length-ways, and do a double hem along what will be the cuff, or use the ready-finished top of the sock for the cuff.

Sew the long sides together to make two tubes, then carefully make holes on either side of the body, just below the neck, just big enough to fit the sleeves and stitch the sleeves in.  You have to do lots and lots of stitches along the seams of the sleeves.

Because Hanley is an extra small bear, there is usually enough of the sleeve sock left over to make him a hat too!

I sometimes watch the Channel 4 News with Polar and Grizzly.  There is a man called Jon Snow on this programme, who tells us what is happening in the world and asks powerful humans tough questions about why they don't do kinder, better things for other humans and animals..  I mention him here because he always wears very brightly-coloured, striped or patterned socks.  Jon Snow's old socks would make amazing jumpers for small bears and other animal friends, so I hope he has lots of furry friends he can give them to once they are worn out.

Hanley has a special jumper, hat and scarf, in red and white stripes, which he asked Polar to make for him out of a new pair of socks, so he can go to see Stoke City play football.  They are playing a team called Liverpool this evening.  Hanley says there was a famous game once, where Stoke got six goals and Liverpool only got one, which meant Stoke won.  Hanley doesn't think they will get six goals tonight but he is going to cheer very, very loudly for them, so you never know!

Wild bears don't wear jumpers.  Most wild bears have very, very thick fur, so they don't need them.  Other bears get through the winter, if it is very cold indeed and there is no bear food, by doing something called hibernating, which is a special type of sleeping we bears can do.  In my next post, I am going to tell you about a time on my boat journey when I hibernated.