A Tea Cozy is a Hat

Ellen's improvised granny square tea cozy

Last Saturday at my El Segundo Slipt Stitchers Guild meeting there was quite a discussion about tea cozies.  A tea cozy is a sweater for your traditional China teapot.  Supposedly the cozy will keep a pot of tea warm.  I do love a nice hot cuppa tea.  I love my little China teapot too.  These days though I find myself using my electric teapot more often than the traditional one because the water is always hot.  True, the electric teapot is not exactly energy efficient.  I guess we may have to revert to old-fashioned ways in the near future.

Coming up in March the Guild is highlighting a knitted tea cozy with a lesson on how to knit it by one of our members.  We'll each be bringing our own teapots and yarn to learn how to properly fit a cozy to our teapots.  Biscuits, cookies and other tea time delicacies will be served.  Delightful!

Granny Tea Cozy by Crochet with Raymond

The head of our Guild Programs e-mailed me to ask if I had any crochet cozy pattern suggestions.  I zoomed through Ravelry for a few ideas.  Basically, a tea cozy, whether knitted or crocheted, is a hat with holes in the side for the spout and handle of your teapot.  You could adapt any hat pattern to fit your teapot, much like you'd adjust the size of a hat to fit different size heads!

Here are a few hat patterns that would make excellent tea cozies!  I may just have to adapt a few of these:

Gnome or Elf Hat

Fire Whirl Hat

Crochet Puppy Hat

A tea cozy makes a wonderful hostess gift, accompanied by a nice assortment of tea.