Tea Cosies for the Family

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Marie Curie is doing some fundraising on a Blooming Great Tea Party theme - which includes a competition to design a tea cosy and win some goodies from Cath Kidston (who is also on the judging panel).  It turns out they also have a couple of very cute tea cosy patterns for sale -- so if you don't want to design your own (or even if you do) you can support the charity with these cuties....

Mom and Dad tea cosies! (Actually, I don't think the girl one is necessarily Mom - but it works for me.) I love them.  The balding dad makes me laugh.

(Copyright for both pictures belongs to Marie Curie Cancer Care - used here with kind permission.)

How perfect for a family gathering. You can buy the pdf patterns at the Marie Curie shop - here's Mom and here's Dad.

I still haven't started my tea cosy because I've been very busy knitting away on the shawl that'll never end.  My Mom is intrigued by the shawl and asks for progress reports each week -- I wish there was an interesting way to say 'still knitting'.  She's very sceptical that it will fit through a wedding ring  so now I've got the pressure to make sure I get that right as well!!

I'm about 15 rows short of the 3rd repeat - about halfway through the centre square.

When I did my sums last week I omitted 52 rows of the centre - so the 313,000 stitch total was understated by about 14,000.  Oh well, what's a few thousand stitches between friends.

I'm really enjoying this project so far -- even the fact that it'll be months (and months) (and possibly months) before I'm done doesn't seem to dampen my enthusiasm.  It took a while to get used to the teeny weeny yarn but now that I have, and now that the the pattern is familiar it's a pleasure to knit away while listening to Jeremy Irons read Brideshead Revisited.  I think I could listen to Jeremy Irons read the dictionary -- such an amazing voice.