Gita's 'Fishbowl' Tea Cosy

My lovely friend Gita enjoys herbal tea while she's working. She makes her infusion in one of those glass teapots made by Bodum - you know, the ones that look like a goldfish bowl! So that the tea stays hot until the last drop, she asked me to make a cosy for the pot. In particular she wanted to be able to pour her cuppa without having to remove the pot from the cosy.

I chose a bamboo/wool yarn, that I'd bought in Denmark, held double in a honeycomb brioche stitch for a nice thick insulating layer, and combined two patterns for a top-loading cosy with an integrated base:

 

Good Crieff by Coryna Blasko   and   Teapot Turtleneck by Suzanne Resaul

Kitten Mittens

I started out intending to make YinYang Kitty Ankle Socks by Inorgaknit but I thought it was a shame to hide the lovely kitty faces inside my shoes or slippers so I made Kitten Mittens instead!


I decided to give them 'flip-tops' because these days you need to be able to use a phone without having to take your gloves off. I am too old to use my thumbs for texting, mind you, so I didn't put flip-tops on the thumbs too!

The original pattern adds the kitty faces and ears using the intarsia method, but I felt this was a bit fiddly working in the round so I added the features afterwards using duplicate stitch.

Riddari - Icelandic Lopi

I bought this as a kit from https://www.shopicelandic.com/. It arrived very quickly and everything needed to knit it was there, including the needles (which I wasn't expecting). The pattern came as a booklet of several designs.

Beautiful design and colours - just what my husband wanted. The yarn is authentic, but too scratchy for me to wear. He, however, absolutely loves it and as it is definitely a top layer garment the scratchiness doesn’t seem to bother him.

Eva's Cardigan

I wanted to say thank you to a colleague for some encouragement and support, so I decided to make a little cardigan for her new baby daughter. I had some yarn left over from making Millie's Cardigan and I really liked the simplicity of Gidday Baby by Georgie Nicholson so here it is:

Dragon Scarves

Dragon Scarf is what I call a scarf that has been knitted from the Hitchhiker pattern by Martina Behm. I love the sawtooth picot edgings and have even embellished these with beads on a couple of the scarves I've made. I have made 6 to date, including 2 that were requested and are now proudly worn by my husband!

Bergere de France Ideal, Vitamine

Araucania Botany Lace with beads

Katia Air Lux with beads

Knitted Knockers

I first heard of Knitted Knockers a few months ago. This is a charity I really felt able to contribute to, by giving my time and using my skills in a practical way, to help ladies who have had a mastectomy or lumpectomy. With my mother, my best friend and her sister having had to deal with breast cancer, this is a cause that is close to my own heart.

Knitted Knockers are prosthetic breasts knitted (or crocheted) from soft cotton and filled with light polyester. Knitted Knockers UK is a charity that supplies these knockers free of charge to ladies who request them. The knockers are made to order by approved volunteer knitters with yarn and filling supplied by the charity. In 2015 BBC Get Creative reported on how Knitted Knockers UK won the People's Choice Epic Award.

I became involved via the UK Hand Knitting's 'Commit to Knit' campaign for National Knitting Week. I applied to become an approver Knocker Knitter, or Knockerette as they call themselves, via the Knitted Knockers UK Applications Board on Facebook. I had to to knit some samples for approval and I am pleased to report that my work was deemed to be of the right standard and so I am now an approved knocker knitter and recently fulfilled my first order.

sample of knocker submitted for approval

Millie's Cardigan

A friend asked me to make up this little cardigan for her great-niece who is 4. The finishing touch are the stripy buttons that I found at Sew n Sew in Bath's Guildhall Market. I think it's rather cute. I had a bit of yarn left over so I made a matching hat with pom-pom.