Since we're nesting heavily as the weather turns cooler, with paint samples on the walls, wallpaper waiting for the hanger, and new kitchen cabinet pulls on order, it is only fitting that I should be working on my own tea cozy from The Well Knit Home.

Today I'll just focus on a little technical detail;how to join a ruffle to the main body of the teapot cover:

Here the bottom ruffle is lined up on top of the foundation piece, with each one on a separate needle (both silver). A third needle, shown in red, is inserted knitwise, starting through the first stitch of the ruffle and then through the first stitch of the foundation piece. The working yarn is poised to be wrapped around the red needle for a knit stitch. Next . . .

The knit stitch has been formed on the foundation piece, with the new loop emerging on the tip of the red needle. And finally . . .

I knit with a little muscle across this particular row to pull the layers together, as the stitches on the ruffled piece want to spread apart. But I am the boss. And you should be too.

I'd planned to post much more since the weekend, but I kept getting interrupted. I guess I can blame part of it on my assistant.

We had to keep him away from the kitchen door tonight when all the Halloween trick-or-treaters came. Otherwise he would have run right past them out into the night. The DH suggested a little costume with horns on it, but Kitty had other ideas. 

Comments

    In a different color way I can see this hemp pillow on at least one of the couches at home. Maybe then I will follow my own directions and put in a zipper. This yarn is machine washable and can go in the dryer. It gets softer and softer with each washing. I remember Kristen had a hard time working with the brand new yarn and had to soak it before she could get gauge.

(She tells me she had forgotten all the emails that went back and forth.)

Kristen also captured the circular dressing table scarf, in Fiesta Yarns Rayon Boucle, which was centered on the chevron table runner, in Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK.   The table runner can doubles as a scarf. All I know is that silk belongs on my neck.  

   It was good to see Kristen, Carole, and Kimberly, and to meet Diana, Jennifer and others who stopped by. I had one of those Rhode Island moments (only about one and a half degrees of separation here) when the boss of someone I  had met in my other life as a daily scribe asked if he could sit down in the chair next to me even if he didn’t knit!

    The ad-hoc knitting group, meanwhile, gave me advice on the colors for the tea cozy I started. More on that soon, I hope. And Kimberly showed us some ultra soft sock yarn from in a green monster colorway from Sunshine Yarns. Totally eye-popping! See Kimberly and her yarn, below.
 

      There was a little bit of hesitation about mixing in Aqua Ice  with the Wedgewood Blue AND the off-white Natural in the Bazic Wool for my very own tea cozy.

     “A little too confectionary?” whispered a quiet internal voice. So I consulted with the ever-stylish Chris, who agreed with the inner, second-guessing self. I can’t count the times I’ve thought I’ve locked up a design only to have a better idea. Which in this case is back to the original idea of a ruffled tea cozy in two colors without any embellishments to avoid an overly busy look.. Onward to the knitting!

 

      The way we count

      The instructions say to cast on 44 stitches. I can do as they say or I can cast on four groups of 10 plus 4. The result is the same. I'll pick the second method every time.
      Here I've used little elastics as my markers for the groups of ten. The markers turn casting-on into an exercise requiring tiny modules of time that can be interrupted or strung together, depending on the circumstances, with no ill effects.. The other day I cast on 160 stitches using little rubber bands as markers, all while I was on the phone. Except for the first ten stitches, I never had to count from the beginning to make sure I had the right number. It’s all about making knitting fit into the lives of people, like me, who have no time to knit.