Know Your Pot

Having knitting friends is a wonderful thing... well most of the time that is. Here we are only weeks before Christmas and I still have quite a few gifts to finish but what am I doing? Knitting myself (well actually my teapot) a cozy. Why? Because my dear friends started their cozies and began sharing pictures of their wonderful work.

So, of course, I jumped over the cliff with them and started knitting the Autumn Tea Cozy pattern.

Having read that this was a fun and simple project I dove right in and cast on without making a gauge swatch (warning bells begin ringing). "No gauge swatch?" you ask. That's right after all it is just a one skein tea cozy. Well, after finishing the picot hem and knitting several additional rounds I discovered that I had knit a gauge swatch - a very large gauge swatch. 

This is when I decided that in order to knit a tea cozy you must get to know your teapot. Become very familiar with him. Know his diameter, where his spout and handle are located, how tall he is and the slope of his lid.








So instead of working on the pile of Christmas UFOs, I spent an afternoon knitting and frogging, re-knitting and tinking and knitting some more. Each time trying my odd little teapot's new formfitting sweater on his cold porcelain shape.

Until at last...

...the perfect fit!

Where's my Sleeve?

Having an ice dispenser in the door of your freezer is a wonderful convenience. That is until it turns into a mass of immoveable ice!

It is such a simple device. You press a button, the door opens and a motor sends some ice down the chute into your glass instantly chilling your favorite beverage. But what if, what if one rouge piece of ice refuses to leave the chute. It's not ready to melt and clings to the side of the chute lodging that simple little door open. No big deal, right? The ice will melt, the door will close. Right?

Wrong!

All, of the nice warm air from your house (remember the refrigerator is in the kitchen) rises up that ice chute and melts a few more cubes before the escapee melts and the door closes and the freezer refreezes the melted ice. Now, what seemed like such a small problem has turned into quite an ordeal, requiring hours of work to empty the freezer and thaw the ice dispenser (great use for a hair dryer).

I estimate it took a good sweater sleeve worth of knitting time to undo this mess!

What's in a Name

No one really knows what to say in their first post, so I will start with the name that I chose.

A few years back (well maybe decades) my first nephew, Harry, went through a time of renaming those around him. His grandmother was called "Mamgra" - his sister "Gat". I was bestowed with the pet name "Dabber". Not sure where that came from, but it stuck.

So my name comes from two of my passions - family and knitting.