Fiber Monday: Cozy and Scrappy

 

In Which I Made A Thing

I have probably annoyed you all at this point with my repeated harping on my recent descent into tea drinking, but here's the thing...

It's getting cold, and I hate cold tea that isn't supposed to be cold.

Solution: Tea Cozy!

But there's one other problem - my teapot has a vertical handle, and 99% of the patterns I've found for tea cozies are for pots with handles on the side, not the top. 100% of the vertical-handle patterns I did find and could read needed money, which I respect, but could not afford at the time!

New Solution: Make my own pattern!

So I now present to you - possibly the ugliest tea cozy on earth.

Made with leftover yarn I cannot identify

Here is the free version of the pattern:

TEA COZY

MATERIALS

• Yarn (any size – pretty sure mine was DK/Light/3)

• Hook (I used a 3mm)

• Yarn needle

• A ribbon or other closure (optional)

STITCHES (US TERMS)

ch = chain

sl st = slip stitch

sc = single crochet

hdc = half double crochet

dc = double crochet

INSTRUCTIONS

START: Ch as long as you need to go around the narrow bottom of your teapot, sl st to first chain to form a loop, trying not to twist. I needed 90 chains – yours may be different depending on hook, yarn, and teapot!

Round 1: Ch1, sc in each ch, sl st to first sc

Round 2-?: Ch1, increase around evenly (so if you have 90 ch, you sc in the next 14 sc, then sc twice in the next sc, repeat around), sl st to first sc of each round, ch1 to start the next.

When your sc increase rounds reach the bottom bulge of your spout, we’ll switch from crocheting in the round to crocheting in alternating rows!

Remember to fit to your teapot constantly so that you don’t get any nasty surprises at the end like “oops, too small, no cozy for you!”

Pattern Rows

Row 1: ch1, sc across

Row 2: ch 1, turn, sc in first sc, then alternate dc and sc stitches around, making sure the dc stitches pucker outwards like a bobble or popcorn stitch! My pattern was sc in first sc, *dc in next, sc in next 2 st repeat from * until last 2 stitches, then dc, end with sc. You may want to have more or less sc stitches between your dc stitches, depending on how wide your rows are.

Row 3: ch 1, turn, sc across

Row 4: ch 1, turn, hdc across

Row 5: ch 2, turn, dc across

Row 6: ch 1, turn, hdc across

Row 7: ch 1, turn, sc across

Repeat from Row 2 until you pass the top of where your spout attaches to the pot

When you pass the top of your spout, sl st in to the first stitch to resume crocheting in the round. Repeat the pattern rows until you reach the top of your pot, hopefully ending on a Row 5, 6, or 7 repeat so you can use that for your ribbon.

When you’re done, just tie it off and weave in the ends.

If you don’t have a spare ribbon or cotton strip laying around, you can, of course, make one by crocheting a long chain in the same yarn or one that would look nice with it and tying that off, weaving in the ends, and using that as a cinching tie. I prefer my cotton ribbon because it isn’t stretchy.

You should have a nice sweater for your teapot now!

Go Enjoy Something!

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Business Breeds Lateness

November being National Novel Writing Month, I am (predictably) working on my first novel. It's long, hard work, and I don't get my word counts down more often than not, but I am plugging away! The first part of the novel is 11.7k words long (and unedited), and the second part, which I'm currently working on, is currently 14.7k words long and... only about half done I'd estimate. I've been working on this novel for about a year now, all told, and it's the longest I've ever focused on one project. Which is why it is currently 3x longer than anything I've ever written, makes more sense, and doesn't suck (according to my First Reader).

You'd think I was fueling this mad dash for literary completion with a flood of my morning instant mocha blend, but instead... I've switched half of my hot beverage intake to tea. I've mentioned my testing of various Chamomiles (and the new Bigelow chamomile I've been drinking lately isn't quite the same as the... aged variety I found in the back of the cupboard, but it's still incredibly good), but I have needed to branch out into other kinds of non-herbal teas, so my mother was kind enough to deliver me a box of Morning Thunder from Celestial Seasonings.

Morning Thunder is a black tea with roasted maté. When my mother was in college, she swears she would drink it because she hadn't yet converted to coffee and she believes that, forty years ago, it contained roasted carob instead of maté. It did still have a buffalo on the box, though! I have to wonder if she perhaps is conflating Morning Thunder with Roastaroma, which is sold as a caffeine-free coffee alternative? It's over thirty years old, so perhaps that's what happened.

Morning Thunder brewed in my nice teapot!

The teapot has a bit of a story to it, too. My mother has had this teapot and its four little matching cups for as long as I can remember, but during one of her Object Purges, she decided she didn't want it anymore. I rescued it from the Goodwill bin, always hoping that one day I'd find a tea I liked and use it. One day, I set it down and the lid flew off, breaking into pieces on the floor. I was devastated. I was also very careful with the mending epoxy and unless you look inside the lid, you have to almost have your nose on it to see the hairline crack! I have the chips I rescued saved on a piece of tape in a plastic bag just in case I get one of those repair kits where you fix something with silver or gold.

I brewed the Morning Thunder in my pretty pot the other day and tried it, hoping it wouldn't leave me pulling faces and dumping it out like the Red Rose with Lemon experiment (yuck - that had to have been a bad lemon!).

I know my first mistake was in only using one bag for the teapot. My second was being impatient, but...

It was still quite nice!

It definitely had that... soggy flavor that most teas impart on me - a dark, rounded tone that reminds me of hiking in the woods of Camden Hills State Park as a kid right after a downpour - but it was balanced out by the stronger, drier flavor of the maté, which you could certainly tell was roasted! Overall, it's not a mocha alternative, but I'll drink it again and gladly! I tried this tea naked, but my partner had milk and reports that it was a bit weak but still quite good.

I'll brew it stronger next time, and we'll see how that goes.

I've since used the teapot to make two separate pots of Chamomile from Bigelow. The first attempt was with two Chamomile bags and another bout of impatience which left me with a fairly weak flowery tea that was still enjoyable but nowhere near my usual four-to-seven-minute steep (I may or may not take the steeping time to go take care of whatever the quickest chore is). My second attempt was a single teabag but I left it in the pot and poured myself several smaller cups of tea until the pot went cold.

This is a major issue, because I cannot finish an entire pot within one hour while crocheting and writing - it's physically impossible.

Solution? I'm making a tea cozy for it. Now, that yielded its own problems because, again, I'm impatient. I don't like having to hunt for the perfect pattern, and Ravelry failed me. It would seem that no one has made a free pattern that I like for a vertically handled teapot. They're all side-handled. Boo.

So I'm making my own pattern using the ugliest yarn I have because there's not enough of it for much else, and I love it in spite of the fact that it's a grungy taupe, navy blue, denim blue, and bright orange. I'm using an F hook, and you can expect pattern notes next Monday if you, too, have a light DK weight yarn you'd like to convert into a teapot sweater.

I think that'll do it from me tonight - it's past midnight and is now officially Wednesdaymania, but I'm both impatient and lazy, so I won't change the title or the content :P

I'll get back to bobbling and weaving my way to cozy perfection and then go to bed.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC