Hello, I'm Nita and I'm a Bearaholic..... For my sins, I'm one of the Godmothers who founded the list a few years ago. Believe it or not, in the good old days before egroups, I used to manually forward all the mails - thank goodness I haven't had to do that over the last few days - it's been mad and fantastic!

I'm 43 (I think) going on 20, no kids, four darling cats and a partner (Ronnie) of 20 years, who can't quite get the bear thing, but has quite a soft spot for my Posh Paws bears and has been known to buy me the occasional bear present! I work full time in IT and can't imagine ever giving that up to work full time on bears, but I enjoy making and selling bears in my own small way - hehe, quality rather than quantity - yeh, right! My other great passion is creative embroidery, which is very much design based. I think this is why I like to paint & dye the mohair and prefer to do one-offs. My ambition is to make really wild and wacky animals, but I guess I have to have a good grounding in bear design before I really start pushing it that far. I collect bears too - love Portobello, Jill Baxter, Gregory, our own Chris Pike and Sue Challis and am on the verge of buying my third Bo Bear (thats between you and I!)

e-mail: nita@odorex.demon.co.uk