My mum loves a good cuppa so I wanted to make a fun tea cosy for her. I found this Rosebud Tea Cosy on Ravelry and thought she would love it. Instead of a verigated pink and green yarn I choose a lovely brown that made it look like a woven basket. According to the pattern this will fit a 6 cup teapot.
You will need 4 and 6mm needles for this project. It also calls for bulky wool and DK wool. Now as each manufacture is different (thanks very much!) check her post for more details on the gauges. I am particularly horrible at doing gauges. I just tuck in and start knitting. Touch wood I’ve been lucky so far. 🙂
For the basket I got 50gs of the brown, 100g for the pink and 50g for the green. I did have yarn left over. So I need to find another project!
To knit the basket 2 pieces need to be knitted using 6mm needles. Do the following according to her directions:
Cast on 25 stitches
Knit a garter stitch until it is 13cm or so in length
Next Row (K2,K2 tog) to last stitch, K1 which leaves you 19 stitches then knit 7 rows
Next Row (K1, K2 tog) to last stitch, K1 which leaves you 13 stitches then knit 5 rows
Next Row (K1, K2 tog) to last stitch, K1 which leaves you 9 stitches. Thread the yarn through, pull tight and fasten off.

The next bit is to knit the rosebuds. Her directions said to knit 15, which I did, but I only ended up using 14 once I put them on the cosy as I wanted it look balanced. Normally an odd number does make it look balanced but I couldn’t get it to do that without it looking a bit lopsided so I went with an even number.
I also had to play around with the pattern as I believe there was a typo. Here is how it played out:
Use 4mm needles and the rose yarn. The pattern said to use st st throughout K2 rows. Wasn’t sure if she meant 12 so I tried that and it was too long so I went with 6 rows. A little long but looked better. She may have meant 2 rows. Once you have the rows it is time to decrease. Decrease at the beginning of the row and every knit row for 10 rows. She suggested Sl1K1PO to decrease and that worked really well. Then cast off. You want to leave a long piece of yarn at the end for finishing later.

I really deviated on the leaves which is the final component to knit. Her directions had you knitting 21 stitches but somehow doubling back and then knitting one leaf at a time. For the life of me I couldn’t figure that out. I was flummoxed! So I did each leaf separately and knitted 30 leaves.
I cast on 7 stitches using the 4mm needles and knit one row. Then for the next 5 rows I st st.
To make the leaves an even triangle I decreased at each row until you are left with 2 stitches and then P tog and cast off.

It was now time to put it all together.
First the basket had to be sewed together. It is a good idea to use a teapot to figure out the openings on each side. Per her instructions I sewed an inch on the bottom on each side. Then I sewed the top seams together leaving an opening to match the spout and the handle.
Once that is done it is time to work on the roses. I pretty much followed her directions at this point as it worked well for me. Place the rose piece flat on the surface with the long length towards you. On the straight edge roll it a couple of times towards the angled side. Then stitch halfway up and back down again to hold it into place.

Next do a gathering stitch and pull in a bit.

Continue to roll the rest of the way. Sew round the bottom to secure the rose.

Once all the roses are done I connect the leaves in groups of threes. I attached them at the corners and used a gathering stitch to pull them in a bit so it would curve round the roses. Place round the rose then sew halfway up the leaves attaching them to the rose.

Now it is time to attach the flowers to the basket. Per her tip I placed the basket over a teapot and it does help figure out the placement of the roses.

I followed the directions of taking 3 roses with leaves and placing them near the top and adding a filler rose without leaves in the centre of that. Then I placed the rest of them round the cosy. To attach I used a crochet hook to pull the pink threads through the basket. I had tied off the green threads and trimmed otherwise you would have a ton of yarn to deal with on the inside of the cosy! I then weaved the yarn into the surrounding roses to pull the bouquet together so it wouldn’t be floppy.

Pull the yarn through to the underside of the cosy.

Next I needed to tie off all that yarn. So I separated the pairs and tied the yarn off with different pairs then trimmed the yarn.

And it was done!

It wasn’t an overly difficult project just time consuming as I have so much going on. I will be looking at her other cosies to try out as this came out pretty well. 🙂 And mum liked it!