Knitting the Blues: Blue MondayThe Cozy Teapot Edition

The Ravelympic projects are rolling out, they are done, but the photo-ops have been few and spending the weekend away did much for inspiration, stash and queue addition, but not for getting my ravelry and blog updated. Luckily, I have a few days to actually post them finished to count toward my medals. Whew.

I'm a little tired of being overwhelmed by the stash and the starts. The Olympic challenge was the perfect vehicle to encourage myself to take a look at things that I was so passionate about at the start and for whatever reasons were shoved aside. Two straight weeks of taking stock and finishing up.

This cozy is pictured in The Knitter's Book of Yarn and I had always wondered why there wasn't a full on photo of it. There are two pictures, one from an angle and another a close-up of the lining. Now, I admit to rushing through finishing, but was pretty dismayed when this is what I got:

Yuck.

I don't know if the designer had this problem when she had it knit (I have been involved with knitting for photo shoots and it just may be that getting this together was really a time issue and creative photography was needed to cover up some things, that's all I'm sayin'. I could be WAY WRONG! so don't take this as truth, just an educated guess), but I was trying really hard to live with it the way it was and I just couldn't. The problem was that I had seamed it, attached the i-cord, picked up the stitches for and knitted the bottom border AND sewn on the i-cord trim on the bottom before i decided I hated it. I had two issues, one was my yarn choice, I used Manos instead of Malabrigo and Manos is less smooth, a very think and thin yarn. The other was, I didn't want to reknit a bit of it. I had been very careful to center the i-cord when I attached it, but not so careful distributing the rows of the i-cord on each side. When I counted I found a pretty big discrepancy on that distribution, so I decided to cut away the yarn attaching the i-cord on one side (leaving it attached at the base) and re-do it.

Snip. The resulting fix isn't as perfect as I would like, but it is an improvement, and since I did it about five times I was ready to give up and live with it.

I'll just set it at an angle every time I use it. AHAHAHAHAHAHA! ha.

From the start I knew I didn't have enough of the blue yarn and maybe not enough of the green to line the cozy, so I decided to line with with fabric. I know it is only lining and I could have used any colors, but I love fabric and knew that would be fun. When I saw the cozy next to one of my Wee Bunny Project Bags I knew what line I wanted the fabric to come from. Long story short and Woolen Rabbit to the rescue, I have a lining (and the lining is interlined as well, nice and warm and well, cozy).

Pattern: Cabled Tea Cozy by Jennifer Hagan in The Knitter's Book of Yarn.
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Wool Clasica
Needles: Heh. Funny story, one side in 8 and one side in 7. I figured it out when I was finished. I was not.happy. I blocked the hell out of the smaller size.
Cast on: January 20, 2008.
Bound off: February 21, 2010.
Finally lined and finished: February 28, 2010.

Yay! I really do love it, flaws and all.

2010. Thirty-five. Yay!

Photo Albums

July 2015

Comments

This is green on one side and blue on the other? Or am I losing it. (I may be losing it... it took a REALLY long time to come up with the plausible explanation above.)

Posted by: Vicki | March 01, 2010 at 05:52 PM