Tea Cosy - Knitting

Another knitted Christmas Present! This time for my mum, who found very similar tea cosies in a shop in Wareham, Dorset, at the same time I bought material to repair my jute bag (see earlier post). She said the pattern reminded her of the old-fashion tea cosies she grew up with, so when I found the pattern via Ravelry I got to work!

My mum wanted "bee" colours, so yellow and brown acrylic were in the recipe, and I have to say this pattern is probably one of the fiddliest things I have ever done!!! The result was a success however, and cosy has been in constant use since Christmas. What's more, it looks spookily similar to the cosy on Mary Poppins' laughter-powered floating tea table in the Disney film!

Mobile Cosy - Knitting

This was a "Secret Santa" gift for a friend and former colleague at Battersea Park Children's Zoo. She loves stars, and got a new mobile shortly before Christmas. Most of all she loved watching me knit at work (during breaks and quiet periods, although the kids who visited the zoo were fascinated so I knit for their entertainment too!) and kept saying she should start again. So, for the Secret Santa I put together some yarn and needles for a homemade "Scarf in a Bag" kit, and made her this phone cosy!

The star is based on the intarsia pattern in Debbie Stoller's first "Stitch 'n Bitch" book, although the pattern is for a wrist band. Again I was using up essentially scrap yarn from my stash, and I found a lovely button in Smith Bros in Tooting. The whole gift was received with lots of thanks, although once she opened it the "Secret" of the "Santa" was instantly dispersed!!!

Banana Cosy - Knitting

A very silly project but also a lot of fun! When visiting Stash, a yarn shop in Putney, I picked up a postcard with a pattern for a banana cosy, from a pile of postcard on the desk. It was an advertisement for "The Rebel Knitter's Guide" to be published in The Guardian that Saturday, which I duly bought. The Monday after the guide was published I started and finished it!

It's simply stocking stitch to the length of a typical banana, with a bit of increasing at one end to get a tapered shape, and a few YOs at the other end to thread a ribbon (or, in my case, an icord) through. Check out the pattern on Ravelry!

I got a lot of funny looks from people watching me knit it in public, I think the shape of the item was suggestive! ;o) My cosy is constructed from yellow acrylic yarn, left over from Tom's Watford United scarf (see earlier posting). The guide I've kept, and the post card I've given to my grandmother, who is planning to make cosies to sell to raise money for a charity "Containers of Hope", who fill boxes with useful items to send to places of conflict/famine/natural disastors etc..