Knitted pineapple tea cosy

It's finally finished! Yay! I handed in an assignment on Friday, another today, *and* I've finished the knitted pineapple tea cosy. Gosh, I'm pretty pleased with myself right now! ~___^

If you'd like to make your own, you can find the link to the pattern on this page or if you manage to find a copy of Nick-Nacks C41, then it's in there too! ^____^

 

I am not a very skilled knitter, so if you can knit and purl, then you too can make this cosy! ^___^ The body of the cosy is made from two rectangles which are then sewn together on the corners and the bobble pattern is made by repeating four rows until the rectangles are high enough. I didn't block my cosy, but it nonetheless turned out fairly similar to the picture included with the original pattern.

Well, similar aside from the colours and obviously my teapot isn't nearly as retro! ~___^

 

My leaves also are not as floppy as the original image would suggest they would be, but I think it looks more pineapple-eque to have them standing up, wouldn't you agree? ^___^ The leaves are pretty easy to do, but I don't really like how they are all connected together. If I would do it again, I would do each of them separately, the same way I did the leaves for the crochet version. I think this would make them a lot easier to sew to the cosy!

The base of my tea cosy is a little wavy, which I think means I need to learn how to do a new cast on (I often have this problem!). I think it could be fixed by threading some elastic through the cosy, but since this cosy is destined for a friend's teapot, I don't want to customise it too much for my teapot.

 

I'm very pleased to have finally cast off on this project, and after I hand in my final, final assignment on Monday (!) I will be on break! I'm so very excited, I'm working on (well, planning on working on ...) a cosplay for Supanova, and then I've got many, many embroideries to do! ^___^ 

Wish me luck!

- Lisa xx

The Giant Pineapple Cosy KAL is over!

Well, that's it! We've been KALing for a month and now it's time to announce the winners! ^____^

Special pineapple judging sunglasses on and ...
 

 

Congratulations to ThistleKnitter! ThistleKnitter won with her gorgeous knitted cosy - isn't it sweet? It looks like it came right out of the 70s! ^___^

But we're not leaving it at that, oh no! We also have five lovely runners up! ^___^
 

Knitting at the speed of light: FrogWitness

 

Best Sideshow Bob imitation: JennineBirrell (for the most funky cosy hairstyle I’ve ever seen!) 

Honey, I Shrunk the KAL: DWScissors

 

 
Most tropical photoshoot: RenKage

 

 
Best use of the Geminio charm: Elvispeth (for making two! ^___^)

Huzzah! Congratulations to all our winners, thank you to everyone who participated, and a big big thankyou to Tanya for helping to organise everything! ^____^

I didn't end up finishing my second cosy, but I did learn a lot while I tried! I now know how to do two more knitting stitches and I think I'm actually getting a bit faster! Once I finish off the leaves I will post it here, but I think for the next KAL the main thing I need to remember is not to organise more deadlines during finals! ~___^ 

Now, I think it's time for a cup of tea, and then it's back to the grindstone! Only eleven more days and I'll be free (frrreeeee!) so expect much more crafty posts heading your way after that! ^___^

- Lisa xx

The Giant Pineapple Cosy KAL begins!

Hello! Well, the Giant Pineapple Cosy KAL is in it's second day! Or first, possibly, if you're in a different country than Australia. Timezones are weird! ~___^ Members in the Ravelry group are absolutely racing through the patterns, so if you haven't signed up yet then there is still plenty of time to join and start knitting or crocheting. Perhaps you could even do both!

I only shared one photo of the crochet cosy in my original post, so I thought I'd show you some more here! ^___^

The knitted pattern says to sew up all corners of the pattern, but I couldn't get the cosy over and under my teapot's handle with it seamed there so I added a button closure instead. I used a big white button which seems to suit it well, but I'm keeping a look out for the perfect pineapple button to replace it ^___^ One can never have too much pineappleyness, right? 

I was a bit worried about the leaves falling over, but they actually have held their shape really well! They are just sewn to the last two rows of the cosy body, and they stand up without any type of support. Except the support they get from each other! ~___^

As you can see, even when pouring, the leaves stay upright! I think that tensioning them tightly has really helped here but if your leaves did end up too floppy, a small length of floral wire inside each one would fix them up nicely.

I'm now working on making up the knitted version, which I think is going to take me much longer than some of the super knitters in the Ravelry group! ^___^ I have finished one side, but I must mention that I totally cheated! Tanya and I were both meant to test out the knitting pattern, but since I am oh so slow, I had only finished about half of one side by the time Tanya had totally finished whipping up her awesome cosy!

 

So I put it away, and only restarted it yesterday when the KAL actually began. I did about six more rows of bobbles and then finished it off. The side I have done is looking a bit wonky, which I hope will improve after blocking. But hopefully now since I've got some practice I'll be able to do the next side a bit quicker and neater! But I do have until June 2nd to get it done, so I'm not going to stress about it ^___^

The bobbles are much easier to see in real life, and I suspect that blocking will also make it much easier to see them. A looser tension would possibly also help, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that! ~___^

I'm working on a couple of sewing projects to show you next week, but my sewing machine is being very uncooporative at the moment. I'm hoping I can work past these technical difficulties, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see! 

Until next time!

- Lisa xx

The Giant Pineapple Cosy KAL (with free crochet and knitting patterns!)

Hello everyone! Last year Tanya and I organised a Foxy KAL that was so much fun that we wanted to do another one! And it's finally happening! ^___^ 

We found a great retro knitting pattern for a pineapple tea cosy and we're excited to share that pattern with you in our new Giant Pineapple Cosy KAL! You can download the pattern straight away (just click on the image or the text below to go to the download link); it was originally made by Patons in their Nick-Nacks C41 pattern book. We don't know when it was released, but since it includes measurements in both centimeters and inches, I'm guessing it's probably from about the 1970s. Ace!

 Knitted Pineapple Tea Cosy Pattern

Tanya made this one, so you could see what you're getting into! Isn't it lovely? She's done a super job and I'm so excited to make my own!

 Crochet Pineapple Tea Cosy Pattern

Now, even though we've called this a knit-a-long, we haven't forgotten about the crocheters! I've made a really simple crochet version of the original knit pattern; it looks a little different but it's still full of retro-style amazingness! You can click the image above to download the pattern from my Google Drive ^___^ The KAL will start on May 5th, and will run until June 2nd and then we'll announce the winner of this awesome prize pack! Far out! ^___^

Join our Ravelry group to stay up to date on all the KAL chatting fun and to share your awesome WIPs and FOs with us! ^___^ See ya on the flip side!

Lisa xx