Susan Cowper
answers your questions!
SUSSING THE SIZE
QI want to make the Christmas tea cosy from issue 230 for an afternoon tea party but I’m not sure if it will fit my teapot, could you tell me what size it is? Percy Buckley, via Facebook Absolutely, I designed it! I make my tea cosies in three different sizes – small, medium and large, but most of my patterns are for the medium-sized teapot. When I’m designing my tea cosies, I use Price & Kensington teapots. They have three sizes and are a really common design and shape. The small teapot serves one person and holds about a pint, the medium holds six cups of tea or about two pints and the large teapot is for big tea drinkers and holds a whopping ten cups of tea which is one and a half litres of your favourite beverage. The great thing about knitting is that it stretches, so if your teapot is a little bit bigger, the cosy will probably accommodate the teapot, but it is best to choose a pattern that is the closest to the size of your teapot. You could also change the needle size of the main part of the tea cosy up one size to go a bit bigger or down a size to go a little bit smaller. You would only need to change the needle sizes for the main cosy and not the other knitted components and embellishments. Having said this, it would only change the main tea cosy by a centimetre or so, so you couldn’t achieve much difference this way.
Another consideration is that the main part of the cosy is designed to be a snug fit on the teapot, not a baggy loose affair. Some of the detailing on the cosies can be quite weighty, and if you have a lot of added knitting to one side, it can mean that the cosy will slip. It’s important that it grips the teapot so that when you’re pouring your drink the tea cosy doesn’t slip around (and cause your tea to get cold!)
With so many different style teapots on the market, it’s very difficult to design a universal tea cosy knitting pattern to accommodate all of them, but my advice would be to compare your teapot to a Price & Kensington teapot. If you are unsure of how big or small Price & Kensington teapots are, measure the amount of liquid your teapot holds, which will give you a rough idea. Or better still, buy yourself a new Price & Kensington teapot, they come in a huge array of bright colours! Susan