Extremely slow progress

I didn't mean that title as a reference to our current building work - there has been lots going on, but it's been mostly behind-the-scenes, hard-to-photograph pipework.  This picture below is not actually in the cloakroom itself - it's behind the little wall they built to put the toilet against.  There will be a door at the front of this space, to box all the pipes in, but to leave it accessible for maintenance work (and no doubt, for storing some of our junk)

Sorry the picture's a little bright - Rory is looking rather luminous here.

No, the extremely slow progress is with the bears.  We seem to have so many babies around at the moment- either in the family, or belonging to friends (belonging?) - that I thought I really ought to come up with a pattern for a simple unjointed teddy bear.  I have made bears as gifts for babies before, but always from commercial patterns.

Well, this pattern is giving me fits.  I am so far on my fifth version of it (fingers crossed this one turns out alright).  It's incredibly frustrating to work on a pattern for an entire week, and still having nothing to take in with me when I go to work on Saturday. 

Luckily, this Saturday, I will have something.  I don't think I ever showed a picture of Charles and Gerald - two of the first bears I ever designed and made myself.   Anyway, Charles and Gerald became Charles and Geraldine when my mother made them bride and groom outfits to wear.  They had been sitting in the unit for a long time, with very little interest, so my mother made a pair of dungarees for Charles, in an eye-popping print (see here), I rechristened him Eric, and he found a home soon after.

Poor Geraldine meanwhile, was left standing at the alter, and sat alone in the unit for the next 8 months or so.  The solution?  A reverse sex-change - back to Gerald - and another eye-popping pair of dungarees.  She could still be Geraldine in her dungarees of course, but to be honest, she does look more like a Gerald.  Or he does.

I just need to re-embroider his nose, but hopefully I will get some photographs up tomorrow.