Still Cosy After All These Years

This tea cosy inspired me to knit. Just look at it. Isn't it perfect? Clearly made from brightly-coloured scraps jumbled together, it is the word 'jolly' manifest in wool. It used to belong to Pete's grandmother and it brought a bit of crazy colour to our neutral-hued home for a few years before being put into storage at the beginning of our Airstream travels. We weren't going to have a teapot, taking up space and payload (weight allowance). Well that soon changed. Tea and coffee are important to me and they have to be made properly - brewed and infused rather than scalded and wrung out!

We recently had a bit of a sort through of our stored possessions and this little cosy came to light again. It has been brought aboard, even though I had just made a new one. A bit restrained in colour perhaps, but in keeping with the Airstream's interior.

My own grandmother showed me how to make cosies, carrying the yarn across the back and keeping the tension. She was a speed knitter. She used to make some dodgy things though, like ladies in crinoline dress toilet roll holders, and lacy tissue box covers. All of these unnecessary disguises would be in whatever garish wool she had stashed. Every time my parents redecorated the bathroom a new crinny lady would be produced, whereupon ( yes that is a real word, heathens) it would be hidden out of sight until she visited and it was ceremoniously placed on the toilet cistern, as if that was where it always lived. More grateful recipients were, hopefully, the charities to whom she donated her wares to raise money.

Anyway, I shall be making good use of one or other of these cosies today. Pete has gone to Wembley to see the NFL game and I will be indulging in a new knitting project, lots of tea and biccies and repeats of Sherlock Holmes and Poirot. More about the project later. I'll just say that it's a pair of hand warmers with a cable stitch. Hand warmers? Like gloves, but without fingers. I was assured by the enthusiastically helpful woman in the wool shop that there's nothing to a cable stitch, much less complicated than it looks. We shall see. Now, time for a brew.