Koala Tea Cosy
This little fella didn’t quite make it in time for the Fifties Fair last weekend, which is all the better really because now I get to keep him! He’s awfully cute, isn’t he? (Until you remember that he has a teapot up his bum, at which point it becomes disturbing.) The pattern is free online and purports to be from 1937. That might explain why I had so much difficulty following it. It reads like it’s supposed to have a picture, but since it doesn’t (except for a random illustration) you’re knitting blind most of the time. You also have to do weird things like knit the two body pieces sideways. Anyway, I had to change a few things: 1) The nose. The shape they give is just perplexing and it didn’t look at all like a real koala. So I went with more of an egg shape. 2) The neck. The opening at the top of the cosy is waaaay bigger than the head, so I had to cinch it up a lot. That’s why I knitted him a patriotic scarf to hide the ugly join. 3) There’s an error when you get to the second row of openings on the front. It should be on rows 67-68, not 66-67. Lastly, this makes for a pretty big tea cosy. I had to pad ours with a dishtowel just to get it to fill out his shape. Using 4ply and smaller needles would give you a smaller koala.

And that is IT for tea cosies for about the NEXT TEN YEARS!