Since I was on a roll with the green/gray combination I thought I'd make a new tea cozy for Paul for Xmas. It was a great idea except for one thing. Gauge, yes I didn't do a swatch to check the gauge before I started knitting and here's the results.
Let's start from the beginning. There was some green and gray yarn left from the birthday pair of socks, but I was afraid it might not be enough to make another pair. Then it came upon me, I remembered Paul suggesting sometime back a new knitted tea cozy would be appreciated. Next step was finding a pattern. There are a lot of knitting patterns for cozies and after a fair bit of looking I landed on this one called Terrific Tea Cozy. If you click on the link you'll note the pattern lists the yarn type, needle size, the number of beads needed and tension (another word for gauge). It is clear the knitter should be getting 22 stitches and 30 rows to 10 cm (4 in) measured over stocking (stockinette) stitch using 4mm (US 6) needles, or should adjust the yarn and/or needle size to get this. (Another mild knitting annoyance is we English speakers can't seem to agree on using a similar language for describing knitting things -- tension vs gauge, stocking vs stockinette stitch. The Internet is great in helping to sort this all out, though. I don't know what my grandmothers did to answer their crafting problems without the Internet, but I digress.)
Under most circumstances I do knit a swatch to check the gauge, but this idea came a bit late so I just started knitting. It is a very, very simple pattern using knitted strips of 8 stitches each, pulling the running stitches in the back tightly to create the ridges. I knit much of the first green/gray cozy much longer (taller) than what you see above when it seemed prudent to test what I had on the bigger tea pot. Because my yarn was apparently not as thick as necessary my gauge was off so my half started project would never stretch enough to cover a multi-cup pot. (Something a swatch would have immediately told me, BTW.) Since we were missing a cozy for our single serving tea pots, I tniked the cozy back to fit the smaller pot thus turning my lemon of a cozy into lemonade.
But the idea had been to make a cozy for the bigger pot, so I did that as well in the tan/brown model. Note to us all: When it says make a swatch to test your gauge, make a swatch. Or even if it doesn't tell you to make a swatch, make one to be sure the final project will fit. In the end doing the swatch would have saved me from having to make two cozies instead of just one. But then, if I'd done it right in the first place what would I have to be writing about here -- more lemonade from this single mistake!
Let me show you the inside of the cozy; it reveals how much yarn is there to help keep the tea hot.
Oh, and you'll note I didn't add the beads, they really aren't Paul's style, and left off the pompoms, because I rather like the top of the tea pot cover anchoring the cozy in place. Several of us have tested them both and find they certainly do the trick--my lemons to lemonade succeeded on several fronts. And I'm reminded again to check gauge and swatch. What more can one expect from a little knitting project?
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| Two Tea Cosies |
Under most circumstances I do knit a swatch to check the gauge, but this idea came a bit late so I just started knitting. It is a very, very simple pattern using knitted strips of 8 stitches each, pulling the running stitches in the back tightly to create the ridges. I knit much of the first green/gray cozy much longer (taller) than what you see above when it seemed prudent to test what I had on the bigger tea pot. Because my yarn was apparently not as thick as necessary my gauge was off so my half started project would never stretch enough to cover a multi-cup pot. (Something a swatch would have immediately told me, BTW.) Since we were missing a cozy for our single serving tea pots, I tniked the cozy back to fit the smaller pot thus turning my lemon of a cozy into lemonade.
But the idea had been to make a cozy for the bigger pot, so I did that as well in the tan/brown model. Note to us all: When it says make a swatch to test your gauge, make a swatch. Or even if it doesn't tell you to make a swatch, make one to be sure the final project will fit. In the end doing the swatch would have saved me from having to make two cozies instead of just one. But then, if I'd done it right in the first place what would I have to be writing about here -- more lemonade from this single mistake!
Let me show you the inside of the cozy; it reveals how much yarn is there to help keep the tea hot.
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| You can really see how thick it is on the small model |
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