Teddy bear troubles

A cousin of mine asked if I could make a big teddy bear for his youngest son. It took a while to find the right pattern, but after a lot of searching online, I suddenly realised I had the perfect pattern all along. So I dove into my pattern folders and dug up a polar teddy pattern from a Dutch crafts magazine. The pattern is made by Christel Krukkert, one of my favourite Dutch crochet designers.

The pattern ended up needing a lot more yarn than I anticipated, so after making the head and an arm, I needed to look for more. Sadly though, the yarn I had used, didn’t have a band on it and since I got it from a friend, I didn’t know which brand it was. So I had to find a matching yarn in the right colour and thickness, which turned out to be much more of a challenge than I could’ve imagined. Eventually, I found a colour that came close enough and thanks to a tip from the shop lady, I realised it was probably the best idea to frog the arm I had already made, so that the difference wouldn’t be too noticeable.

I had finally made all the parts and was getting ready to put everything together. That’s when I saw that the arms seemed way too big for the body. It was as if this teddy spends all his time at the gym lifting. So I ended up frogging the arms again (well, one entirely and the other about halfway) and with some adjustments, they look a lot better to me. Now I just hope my cousin’s little boy likes this teddy as well 🙂

On the rigth: the arm as it was described in the pattern. On the left: the arm with my adjustments

How do you handle mistakes in patterns? Do you make your own adjustments, ask the creator, or give up on the pattern all together? I almost choose option three, I was pretty much done with the bear at that point ^_^’ but in the end, I’m glad I didn’t!

Cheers, Lydia