Thursday 13 December 2012

Ode to an Insomniac

I don’t know if any of you have ever suffered from insomnia, I have for many years and from my experience it’s no picnic. I have a whole routine worked out to deal with it now but some years ago I spent many a dark night prowling my house trying to kill time waiting for the sun to rise. One such sleep deprived evening I was particularly antsy and so I decided to take up my knitting to try to work out some of my frustrations.

My dad had been over during the week for lunch and the tea in our pot had cooled while we had been eating our soup. I didn’t have a tea cosy at the time so I decided I’d make one for myself.



I had been given some of that hairy wool by someone so I decided I’d use it in my cosy. I measured up my tea pot and came up with a pattern. I knit away feverishly for a couple of hours until the body of the cosy was finished.

I then sewed up the edges and slipped it over my tea pot. Maybe it was that I hadn’t slept for three nights in a row but lo and behold there stood a little creature before me.



To me it looked like a soft rotund bearded critter with pointy ears. So following that logic, I decided my new cosy should have some eyes. I dug out some eyes from my sewing box and glued them on. So if this little guy had a beard, ears and eyes, I decided what he really needed was a tail. I then knit a long tail and sewed it on to the back. I remember I was delighted with him and I kept turning him around and admiring his furry form.

I wasn’t finished there though. I thought the thing that he really needed; besides a tail, was a hat. I made him up a little felt hat with a button and a feather.



I perched him on the bedside locker and waited for Gary to wake up so I could show off my new creation. He was suitably impressed and we called him Gregarious- Greg for short, because we thought he had such a winning personality. And from there starts a long and unexpected journey into the work of tea cosy making. Greg really struck a chord with people and I have been asked to make tea cosies or Snugs, as I call them, ever since.

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