a simple yarn

I’m in greater London…in Loop as a matter of fact…Islington. I love that shop! Can I rent space and just live there for a while? Not only does it have luscious, yummy and scrumptious yarn (okay, I know it sounds like I’m having it for dinner, but ya know, it’s so delectable!), but it also has a way-cool assortment of knitted and felted products. A veritable feast for all my senses!

And then I saw it…

THE cozy.

Not your run-of-the-mill tea cozy, but, would you believe it, a cafetiere cozy! I had to have it! Not the cozy, mind you, I’m a knitter! I had to have the pattern. I’ve been wanting to make a cozy such as this for a long time! But they didn’t have patterns. Only the cozies. So, I did what every knitter does. Okay, I didn’t sketch it out…this is the 21st century! I took out my handy-dandy picture phone and surreptitiously snapped it and have subsequently destroyed any evidence of it. But you can’t copyright ideas, can you? At least Dan Brown would say not.

Great! Have needles…have yarn…have (picture of) pattern…ready to make some prototypes.

Version 1
WAAAAAAAAY too big! Made it out of Lopi…not a good choice due to fuzzy-felted-endproduct-factor. Could easily fit around a soup pot. Or perhaps fill it with water as a paddling pool for the kiddies. Nope. Try again.

Version 2
WAAAAAAAAY too small! Used some Gedifra yarn…lovely choice in an appropriately themed cappuccino-brown but didn’t have the dimensions sorted out. Kind of hard to retro fit what the pre-shrunken size ought to be. Not good at that. Too many variables…needle size, yarn gauge, how many stitches to cast on. I’m scratchin’ my head…

So, feeling a little like Goldilocks, I try for..

Version 3
JUUUUUUUUUST right! Yep, I’ve finally gotten it right and have come up with a cutie cafetiere cozy.

But what about the first two?

Well Version 1, found a good home with Aideen who has a party sized cafetiere. Didn’t know they made a 12 cupper! But she was happy to have it. It can also double as a shrug for her in cooler temps!

Version 2 was using up its shelf-life in my yarn cupboard…until one day, after I had dropped my PDA for the umpteenth time cuz it falls out of the holder, I thought, hey, why not give that little-cozy-that-wasn’t a second chance? So out it came to be sewn up and embroidered with a little Manos del Uruguay and there you have it…instant PDA diary cover with the all-important snap closure.

So I’m once again feeling good for having saved the environment by reconfiguring the wannabe cozy into something useful by giving it (am I anthropomorphising?) a new life!