I love crochet; it’s such a fun, easy hobby. I particularly love small, quick projects that give swift gratification of a handmade item. In addition to blogging, volunteering, and authoring teaching resources, I also design crochet patterns.

Lilac the Unibear. Needless to say, the kids named her. They also named her brother, Coco.

It’s been a while since I picked up a hook; life got in the way, and background circumstances haven’t been ideal. (In fact, the change in circumstances is partly behind my logo rebrand. The Chinese character 3 represents me and the kids – it’s also reminiscent of a road, as we are moving on as best we can. There are many forms of slow but the legalities are certainly moving like treacle.)

New logo. 🙂

Anyway, putting that sort of news to one side, I recently started to do some crochet. As I said, it’s super fun and a great mood boost to whip up something you made yourself. In the middle of my tenuous freeform project, the kids offered their input. It went something like: “What are you making? Is that crochet? Are you making a bear? You should make a unicorn. It’s a unibear!”

Well, how could I say no?! I duly designed the Unibear, and the pattern is available in my Ravelry store. I also made two unibears because sometimes it’s not worth the squabbling!

Lilac the Unibear on the left, and Coco the Unibear on the right. We love shaking their manes and tails!

Truth be told… I was actually going to make a regular bear. So, my Unibear pattern also includes instructions to adapt it into a panda bear. I was going to work up a sample in the normal black and white colours but, this time, I distracted myself with Google and Wikipedia and plumped for the brown Qinling panda colours.

Qinling panda bear, with bamboo shoots. As he isn’t a unicorn, the kids haven’t named him yet!

You know how people talk about going from A to Z? I’m not sure if it’s the creative process, or maybe the audience, but I reckon we go through every letter of the alphabet! Our path is a tangle of curious sidetracks and twisting meanders. Still, whatever path we take, I guess the main thing is we will get there in the end. I hope that, whatever paths my readers are on, you are also getting to wherever you need to be! 🙂