A Quick Tea Cozy Some years ago, Garry bought me a high tech tea cozy for my favorite pot. The cozy was made of the same stuff they use to make soft-sided coolers. It did a credible job of keeping the tea hot, but it was also bedraggled from years of use. Its stuffing was coming out in places, and it had a couple of scorched spots from sitting on a burner that was accidentally turned on. I had run out things to knit. On Saturday, an exposition of knitting came upon me. I eyed the tea cozy and went rummaging through my yarn stash. I find a nice bulky wool in sapphire blue, and set to work to try to reproduce the cozy. I wanted to make a round bottom so that the entire pot would be covered. I didn't want to have to take the cozy off to make tea or to pour. I wanted the pot to live in the cozy except when it was being cleaned. I wanted to make a sort of sweater for the teapot. I started at the middle of the bottom. After a few tries, I had a nice, flat, knitted circle. If I'd sat down and worked out the math, I would have realized that I needed to make raglan increases in a spiral pattern, but I was just winging it, so I first got a cup shape (like a hat) and then a ruffly shape (too many increases). I then thought things through a bit and made a perfectly flat circle. At the edge of the circle, I knitted a few rounds in a nice dense pattern. Then I split the sides into two sections to make room for the handle and the spout, rejoining on the spout side after a decent interval. I added an eyelet row near the top for the closing tie, and then added a few buttons on the handle side to snug the fabric to the pot. All during this process, I was wondering whether the homemade wool tea cozy would keep the tea as warm as the high tech one had. If not, I'd have to buy another high tech one. Sunday evening at 6:15, I poured boiling water into the teapot to test the cozy. At 9:15, the water was still piping hot and the spout of the teapot too hot to touch comfortably. At 11:15, the water was still hot enough to pour a satisfying cup of tea. I decided to leave it all night, and it was only lukewarm by 9:15 the next morning. The high tech cozy only kept tea at a drinkable temperature for a couple of hours. The wool cozy keeps tea drinkable for almost three times as long as the high tech one. I first suspected that wool was superior to manmade fibers when I was living on Kodiak Island in Alaska. I discovered by trial and error that a wool poncho kept me drier and warmer (even if I did smell like a wet sheep) than any type of modern raingear. I later learned that wool is more fireproof than modern fireproof fabrics, and that it has many other superior qualities. I had never thought, however, of making a wool cooler. I have sometimes wrapped cold drinks in my wool coat to keep them cool in the car, but never considered knitting a cooler. Anyway, I'm thinking of going into business selling tea cozies of the new, 100% natural, 100% biodegradable miracle fiber that keeps tea hot three times as long as the high tech alternative. The scarf and the tea cozy both share a Moss Diamond pattern. When I made the cozy, I came to appreciate the many levels of symmetry of this pattern. It looks the same front and back, and all rows have the same instructions knitted flat or in the round. It's easy to split repeats for things like spout openings, and it's easy to see where you are. It's fast becoming my favorite stitch pattern. The yarn is a Brown Sheep bulky single-strand wool. I later knit another cozy for a smaller teapot in blackberry stitch (pictured here).

Copyright © 2004 by Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.