I’ve been looking forward to sharing this project with you – it’s one of my all-time favorites. My first attempt at Lollo the African Flower Bear!

I admired this lovely pattern for a long time before I finally pulled the trigger on buying it. I would have gotten it sooner, but its $10 price tag and seeming complexity made me hesitate. As for the price, it was definitely a wonderful pattern worth paying for. (And it costs even less now!) I’ve already used it twice.

It is a time-consuming project with lots of color changes – make sure you’re committed to a long-term project before you start. 🙂 I still can’t believe how brilliant it is – different-sized hexagons and pentagons come together perfectly to form such a cute (join as you go) bear.

I used sparkling Aunt Lydia’s Iced Bamboo (size 3) for this project. (Well, for the aqua and white parts anyway. The black yarn is actually a few different types/brands because I kept running out and/or couldn’t find the same brand twice.) It turned out great, but the Iced Bamboo was a bit tough to work with using those tiny steel crochet hooks that the pattern calls for. The thread splits and tangles very easily. That being said, this clearly didn’t bother me too much – I made a second one with the Iced Bamboo later on.

I lucked out by finding some flower-shaped buttons at Hobby Lobby to secure the jointed limbs. They don’t sell these awesome buttons anymore at my local store – I snapped up the last of them on clearance to save for future Lollo projects.

I got a blue ribbon on this project. Can’t wait to make another!