Blackberry tea cosy

This is another pattern I found in a magazine - this time Patchwork and Craft- and that the friends with whom I sit and stitch every couple of weeks decided we should make together. It is by Bianca Kingham of Wolfberry Knits and called Blackberry Teacosy. Patchwork and Craft describe it as " a teacosy with knitted blackberry and leaf applique , giving the effect of embroidery". Bianca's Ravelry  page has a vest using a similar technique.

We spent one session knitting the base. This is mine - using some leftover Bendigo Woollen Mill Murano- the only roughly 10 ply wool I had to hand.  As you can see, I forgot when I started that this wool develops a slant unless you knit into the back of the stitch! I switched as soon as I remembered but decided not to undo, relying on the leaves and berries to distract from the slant.

At our next meeting, the two of us who were there decided to embroider the leaves and berries rather than knitting them. We used reverse chain stitch for the leaves and stems

and straight stitches at different angles for the berries. We could have used French Knots but found the straight stitches gave a better finish on the surface of the wool. I used only oddments of wool I had in my stash so the leaf colour is a bit limited.

This was a pretty simple project and a lot of fun to do together. It lends itself to endless variations and play.

Fortissima Colori Socka Teacosy

I lost a post on the construction of the paint box for the toy chest. While I restore it, here's one of the knitting projects I've been working on.

I  thought when I first bought Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders edited by Judith Durant, that I'd like to have a go at some variation on the South West Cactus tea cosy on page 257.

I didn't much go for the dangling cacti - but I thought this would be a good chance to try a wool that is meant to knit up in a way that resembles fairisle - without the need for charts and patterns.

It took me a while to source the wool, which I eventually found at Camilla Valley Farm in Canada. I ordered 9070 Sombrero, and had been waiting the chance to try out a tea cosy.

I should, of course, have measured the base of the teapot and compared it with the finished measurement. Instead, I knitted a couple of inches and decided the base was much too big, so unravelled it and began again with two-thirds of the stitches. Much better







My next mistake was to assume that the 'float stitch' was a means of carrying wool over on the inside - as you would for fairisle. Eventually I realised that the 'floats' were decorations on the outside of the cosy. I decided at that point that I could live without seeing the floats and continued on regardless.


Because I was adapting a much larger tea cosy, the gap for the spout was much larger than needed. I therefore picked up some stitches and knitted a gusset. I could have done tricksy things link the colours, but didn't.






I have had fun playing with this wool and creating the tea cosy. I think it creates interesting patterns and effects. It isn't, in my view, comparable to fair isle. It is fairly limited in its pattern creation.







It looks good on the shelf alongside the owl.

Owl teacosy from salvaged wool

I had a request from friends for a teacosy. After looking through the patterns I had,  they chose an owl - the one I made for one of our own teapots a while back. This was on my list of things to make, but when the first large egg-basket felting failed, I realised that the wool I unravelled unscathed would be perfect for an owl. So this is the result.

I had some cream acrylic left from the Failynn Fox cowls. I mixed that with some grey two-ply for the breast and used the unravelled mixture of Bendigo Classic Java and the variegated Shepherd Colour4Me .

I used a few oddments of  brown and white alpaca for the beak and eyes. Here are the assembled bits.

The Bendigo Classic Java and Shepherd Colour4Me mix is remarkable - no sign at all that it went through the felting process - just lovely thick, even wool - great for keeping tea warm.



Here she is completed, and minding one of our smaller teapots.

Friends are happy and so am I. The owl looks a bit sad - but will no doubt cheer up on the larger teapot for which she is intended.

Owl teacosy

I came across some terrific knitting patterns at PeriwinklePark on etsy.com, and bought three of them. I tried out the owl teacosy over the last few days using up bits of left over wool.

It is knitted by combining two dark coloured wools for the body of the owl and two light coloured wools for the breast. I used a wool and mohair mixture for the body and got the back done OK.

The body is a very clever shape, pulled in a bit to form ear shapes.

However, I ran out of the mohair part-way through the front, so had to improvise a bit. I figured it wouldn't matter too much if I made the change around and above the eyes.

The best bit is the eyes. The circles are created by knitting a straight piece and drawing up the stitches - so simple. The beak is simple too. Much of the charm is from the use of combinations of the basic colours to create the features.

I had to dig around a bit to find the eyes I knew I had somewhere. I found them eventually in my new button box created a couple of weeks ago!



The eyes were a lot of fun to create.







The colour change in the wool doesn't look too bad. It took a couple of days of knitting in between making a big batch of quince paste - a really fun, relaxing project.

Madame Weigel's Knitting Patterns

Since writing about the daffodil tea cosy, I have had some requests for patterns from the book I used, so did a bit of research into the company that produced the book. That particular book seems to date from 1935.

The Weigel company, that published the book, was founded by Johanna  Weigel, born as Johanna Wilhelmine Astmann in Prussia in 1847. She went to the USA and met and married her German-born engineer husband in New York, where she worked for McCalls, designing paper patterns. They visited Australia in 1877 and stayed on in Melbourne.






She made patterns with clear instructions, initially just for friends but eventually established a business in Lennox St, Richmond, Victoria. In 1880 they published a monthly subscription journal, Weigel's Journal of Fashion. Her business thrived throughout Australia and New Zealand. When she died in January 1940 she left a trust to provide exhibitions for engineering students and a substantial proportion of her estate to the employees of Madame Weigel Pty Ltd, which continued until the death of the last one in the 1960s. 
Both the National Library and the Powerhouse Museum have collections of Madame Weigel's paper and knitting patterns. She has an entry, written by Deirdre Morris,  in the Australian Dictionary of Biography http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/weigel-johanna-wilhelmine-13242.

At least a couple of her knitting patterns are in the public domain, including the daffodil tea cosy of my last blog, available at http://britex.ithus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mdm-weigel-knitted-tea-cosy2.pdf



The cottage tea cosy pattern has been transcribed in the public domain at http://knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/teacosies/cottage-cosy.htm.  I am posting a photo of the pattern , now well out of copyright, below. It's a bit huge for the blog, but  hopefully readable.

Tea cosy

A few months ago I had a request for a tea cosy for a small teapot. It's an easy thing to move on to from the cardigans and hats, while I am preparing for my next smocking project, so I dug out an old pattern book of my grandmother's - stored with other patterns in an old box commode in my study!

I made the house tea cosy from this book for a friend about 25 years ago. One of these days I just might get around to making the koala, but this time I thought the little frilly one might fit the bill.

It is meant to resemble a daffodil and I liked the idea of graded colour, but I went for shades of red to orange from bits of wool I had around about 4 ply.

I knitted a sample to get a sense of the size. Although the pattern said it was for a five cup pot, there were no dimensions. My sample was half size - and ended up tiny - about 6cm.

The full pattern, which I finally made, casts on 159 stitches, which seems huge.

However, the pattern starts with p3 k10 across the row, then reduces every  knit row to p3 k8, p3 k 6 etc so it is forming little tucks, and dramatically reducing the length.

This is the reduction after 9 rows.

After 20 rows there ar only 39 stitches left on the needle and the knitting width is reduced to about 12 cm. 

You then k3, cast on 10 all the way across and start again in a slightly lighter shade.

I used four shades to get the size I wanted.

Last night I finished it off - made the little leaves in the two of the base colours rather than introduce a green. Autumn leaves!


I had thought I might need to line it, but I think I'll give it a go as it is.



The teapot is squarish and the cosy stretches to fit.

I think almost all the teacosies I knew as a child must have been made from this pattern. It is very familiar to me. I picture it in dark greens and browns.