Cosy knitting

I end up making very odd things sometimes...

A few months ago, my sister sent me a newspaper clipping about knitted home decor, including a teacosy with MORE TEA, VICAR? on one side. She volunteers at York Minster, and joked that she should have one with, 'More tea, Archbishop?' on it. That set me thinking.

Just before her birthday I finished her tea cosy:

I made it more or less the shape of a bishop's mitre, and turned a slight problem into a resounding success by deciding to put ties in the bittom instead of sewing it up. This was actually because I wasn't sure of the size of her teapot, but they ended up looking like the bands at the base of a mitre. I love it when a plan comes together. Especially when it's accidental.

I made the two sides separately, and made a diamond-shaped section in contrasting yarn (the one I used for the ties and embroidery) to go between the two pieces at the points. I fixed the points shut with a press stud, so that, if she wants to use it with a tall coffee pot, she can undo the press stud and have extra height if she needs it.

The embroidery was much simpler than I had feared it would be. I typed the phrase into my word-processing package, tried different fonts and sizes till I liked the look of it, then printed it off onto ordinary paper. Then I followed the instructions in this article. I had to fill in one or two stitches when I removed the paper, but by and large it worked extremely well.

The back looked a little bare, so I found an outline cross design online and embroidered it on in the same yarn:

It was a surprisingly quick make, and now I'm about to make another for a friend - whose surname is Bishop!