Foxy Teacosy

Earlier this year my husband and I began adding tea drinking to our evenings binge watching TV series. We would regularly sip through a few cups of camomile or oolong in front of a bit of GoT or Dr Who. Eventually we invested in a teapot. This stark white teapot became a worthy target for my forever knitting fingers and thus the great Foxy Cosy was created.

As our teapot fleet slowly expanded, I found myself drawn to recreate the glory of Foxy and eventually managed to capture the process as a written knitting pattern. I'm releasing my pattern here, free of charge to all whose stark, plain teapots are calling for foxification. Enjoy.

Foxy Teacosy Pattern

The Foxy Teacosy is worked from the bottom up, starting flat and joining to knit in the round for the top third (The ears and top). The top is grafted together with Kitchener stitch. The nose portion is added last. Stitches are picked up across the middle at the colour change and the nose is knitted back towards the bottom. It is then stretched into place and secured with a nose button at the centre bottom.

The finished cosy is a rectangle shape with a gap on one side for the spout. Two buttons secure the other side around the teapot handle. The shape of the teapot brings foxy to life.

Baby Button Boots Pattern/Tutorial

Here is the first of my written up baby shoes patterns. I started with my favourite, and also the one that is freshest in my mind. As you can see, there is a slight mismatch between the boots themselves and their chosen name. They as yet have no buttons attached. I'm planning to add a velcro closure and sew buttons onto the tabs down the upper portion of the boot. I just don't have any suitable buttons at the moment, so you will have to use your imagination.

ButtonBoots Instructions

ButtonBoots Pattern

To make the boots as pictured above, download these two PDFs and off you go. Please note, I'm not a professional pattern writer so I apologise if I've missed anything important. I tried to be as thorough as possible and included plenty of photos.

Sizing wise, I'd guess these are about 3-6 month size. Again, I'm sorry if this isn't quite accurate. My son was a big baby, so my estimations of sizes are probably skewed a bit to the large size.

Good luck to anyone that finds and attempts these boots, I'd love to see what people come up with and any hear thoughts on the design and pattern and will endeavour to answer any questions as best I can.

Play Tepee

For Christmas this year I made a tepee for Oscar. It took me a few evenings to muddle out a plan and another week or so to sew it up during nap times. I wrote down a crude set of instructions on how to make one for a couple of friends, and thought I'd share here in case there's anyone following my exploits that wants to have a go. The instructions are rough, but hopefully are enough to give an understanding of the process.

Hexagonal Based Tepee (PDF)

The final product, as presented to the wee man on Christmas morning:

Crochet Companion Cube

I spent the last week making this for my dad for fathers day. One crocheted companion cube. I took inspiration from a couple of other peoples takes on the companion cube:

One here: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=234375.0 A knitted one: http://knittedcompanioncube.blogspot.com/2007/12/knitted-companion-cube-assembly.html And another crocheted: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/27/today-in-joystiq-december-27-2007/

So I decided to come up with my own pattern for one. Mine is a miniture (About 15cm x 15ccm x 15cm) , as I only had 4 days to complete it and I’m not the fastest crocheter on the block. Anywho… here’s the result, and a link to my pattern in PDF form:

Companion Cube Pattern – Typo Fixed (Updated 21-04-2013)

Comments

Danielle (2011-04-29 00:45:27): Thank you for supplying your pattern! I've been searching for a smaller sized one, all the others I can find seem to be making really large cubes. This will make a brilliant gift for my boyfriend, so thank you for giving me somewhere to start with! :D

Shiri (2011-07-06 08:34:14): I love it! I actually saw an idea to stuff one with a cube of memory foamcut to the appropriate size and i think i'll try that!

Alexandra (2011-07-10 13:06:28): This is gorgeous! I'm definitely going to try this out as soon as I finish some projects.

Alexandra (2011-07-11 20:23:23): I hope you don't mind but I'm going to sell completed companion cubes to a few friends, and I will credit you many times over. :)

Beverley (2011-08-21 20:19:39): Hey, no worries at all, you can use the pattern however you wish. Share the Portal love :)

Retsnimel (2011-08-23 04:37:45): Thank you very much for this pattern !

Nichole (2011-12-01 16:24:09): Thank you so much for this pattern! I look forward to making it. This one looks the best by far! I will be giving it to my Portal loving friend for Christmas :D

Christian H (2011-12-28 14:48:58): I’ve looked at soo many other ones and this is by far my favorite! It’s neat, tidy, and not lumpy! I’m having a problem though. I can’t open the pattern. It’s not a problem with the pattern, it’s just that my computer opens it in an html format, which I can’t read. I don’t know what to do with that. Could you please email me the pattern? PRETTY PLEASE!

Enphra (2012-02-16 03:09:41): Thanks so much for sharing this pattern! I was wondering what kind of stitch you use to sew the light gray corners onto the dark gray ones? I just can’t get em to look as neat as the example pictures. :(

Beverley (2012-02-18 12:09:45): It was a while ago that I made this, so I'm not exactly sure what I did. I generally tend to just tack things together with a basic sort of running stitch though. I used light grey wool and just tried to hide the stitches in the last row of crochet around the light corner itself probably. Sorry not to be more help, good luck. :)

Beverley (2012-02-18 12:23:46): Hey Christian, I just emailed you the pattern. Sorry it took me so long :)

Enphra (2012-02-18 22:55:19): All right, I'll just keep trying things out until it looks good then, thanks for your answer. :)

Alexia (2012-04-07 12:49:32): Ahh I've been trying to crochet this, but i can't seem to figure out how to do the corners D:

Patricia (2012-04-30 14:36:37): On the pattern for the dark grey corners what is 3cs? The rest of the pattern uses all sc ; did you mean sc? I found instructions on how to do a cluster stitch which is abbreviated cs but its used for decreasing, not increasing.

Jason (2012-06-16 19:42:00): What is 3cs? I tried doing it as a cluster stitch and it ended up coming out very wrong but trying it with single crochet also came out wrong.

Paula (2012-06-20 09:38:20): This would make a great tissue box cover. Although the shape would be off a bit but you could add spacers. Can you tell I have been on a functional only kick here latly? I have way too many cute things just sitting around!

kat (2012-09-03 05:47:51): I have the same problem. the darkgrey edges are coming out wrong everytime. they are like a big circle with some little edges. thats not how they supposed to be mh? (; I would LOVE to do this but I don’t get how you did the edges. it would be awesome if you would answer me. thanks alot Kdot.

Brandy (2012-10-22 06:44:16): I love this! What adjustments would I have to make to make a large one, like 10 inches high?

red (2012-11-17 17:58:12): aaaaAHHHH I CAN'T GET THE LIGHT GREY CORNERS RIGHT

Heather (2012-11-30 05:45:14): Husband says this is perfect and that I must make one for daughter. They play the game together and have lots of fun. Thanks so much for sharing.

Laura (2013-03-22 09:43:24): I'm also wondering what "cs" is in the section for the dark corners. I haven't gotten to the 12 edge pieces yet, so I don't know what problems I may encounter there, but I can't figure out whether cs is a typo or some special corner stitch that isn’t detailed in the instructions. Please advise!!

Beverley (2013-04-21 14:05:05): Gosh, sorry everyone. I didn’t realise the massive repeated typo in my pattern. “3cs” should read “3sc”, so just 3 x single crochet in the same stitch. It’s been a long time since I made this so I’m afraid I can’t really offer much of a troubleshooting guide.

Tamara - Moogly (2013-06-25 04:18:46): This is fab! I featured the cube this morning on Moogly - Thanks so much for sharing your pattern!

Crystal (2013-07-04 11:12:12): Can someone please help me? I've gotten to the part where you make the light grey corners and I get confused at step 3: "ch1, (sc, 3sc, sc) around (15 sts). Sl to join." Does this mean the pattern goes ch1, (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), Sl OR ch1, sc, 3sc, sc, 3sc, sc, 3sc, sc, 3sc, sc, ect., Sl

Tsukeeno's (2013-07-15 12:10:07): Wow, that looks AWESOME!!! I know it's been posted a long time ago, but I had to say it. Congratulations, you are great! ^.^ And @Crystal, it has to be the first one: ch1, (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), (sc, 3sc, sc), Sl it’s the only way to end up with 15 stitches :)

Corey (2014-04-29 14:26:53): My apologies, I realize this post is several years old, but I would love to make this. It appears there's no longer a PDF link to click through to, unless I'm blind.

Sarah (2014-07-31 20:01:54): Could you email me the pattern? I want I make it as a baby gift for my cousin

Beverley (2014-09-09 19:58:21): Hi, pattern is linked above it's just hard to see because I really need to modify my blog style to highlight links. Here is is again: /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CompanionCubeFixed.pdf

Beverley (2014-09-09 19:59:55): Hey, sorry for the lack of response. I'm well out of the habit of looking after my site. The pattern is linked just about the images. It is impossible to see as it’s not highlighted as a link in anyway. Next mission is to get to a computer and fix that. Anyway, here’s the link again:

Hayley-Bear Beanie

Just finished a teddy bear beanie for Hayley. It was super fun to make, I hope it fits! Brown wool is : Naturelle Chunky 14 ply 100% pure NZ wool. Pink wool is : Mill Shop, Quick Knit 45% acrylic, 45% wool, 10% mohair. (feels like plastic when crocheting though....)

Approx Size : Small-Medium Women's.

Pattern Follows: Pattern (In semi pattern-english. This is the first pattern I've written out so I hope it makes sense)

Teddy bear Beanie
Stitches
- Ch – chain stitch
- Sl – slip stitch
- Tr – treble crochet
- Dc – double crochet
- Fptr – front post triple
- Bptr – back post triple 
Materials
100g 14 ply 100% wool, brown
- teeny tiny bit of quick knit chunky pink stuff
- 5mm crochet hook (for brown)
- 4mm crochet hook (for pink)

Outer Ear (Make 2 – using brown)
1. Ch 3, 8 tr in 3rd ch from hook. Join round with sl
2. Ch 2, 2 tr in each tr around. Join with sl
3. Ch 1, *1 dc in next tr, 2dc in next tr* repeat * 7 times
4. Ch 1 turn, *1dc in next tr, dc decrease next 2 tr* repeat 7 times fasten off.

Inner Ear (Make 2 – using pink)
1. Ch 3, 6 tr in 3rd ch from hook. Join round with sl
2. Ch1 turn, 2dc, tr, 2tr, 2tr, tr, 2dc in next 6 tr fasten off.

Hat Base
1. Ch3, 10 tr in 3rd ch from hook, join round with sl
2. Ch3, 2tr in each tr around, join with sl
3. Ch3, *tr, 2tr* all the way around. Join sl
4. Ch3, *tr, tr, 2tr* all the way around. Join sl
5. Ch3, tr around increasing every 5th (2tr in every 5th stitch). Join sl
6. Ch3, tr around increasing every 10th. Join sl
7. Ch3, tr around increasing every 15th. Join sl
8. Ch3, tr around increasing every 17th. Join sl
9. Ch3, tr around increasing every 20th. Join sl
10. Ch3, tr around. Join sl
11. Ch3, tr around. Join sl
12. Ch3, tr around decrease every 20th (tr decrease each 20th and 21st stitch together). Join sl
13. Ch3, tr around decrease every 18th. Join sl
14. Ch3, tr around decrease every 16th. Join sl
15. Ch3, tr around decrease every 14th. Join sl
16. Ch3, *fptr, bptr* all the way around. Join sl. Fasten off.

Attach Ears to base. With brown wool

Comments

Liana (2011-03-05 09:12:02): You have so good photos!!! But I am sorry-you don't write the size of hat and age of baby/ Can you please write me the sizes of children heads 0-3 m 3-6 m 6-12 m 1-2 years 2-5 years? but anyway You have good step by step tutorial!

Beverley (2011-03-05 12:28:25): Whoops, didn't realize I'd missed such a crucial piece of info. This pattern is actually for an adult hat. It's small-medium women's size.

Jen (2012-01-17 02:30:09): Hi there...love your hat, so I wanted to try to crochet one myself. I don't understand how you attach the inner to the outer ear...?

Beverley (2012-02-18 12:22:42): Glad you like it. When I made the ears the inner and outer ear fitted together quite snuggly, I just pushed the inner inside the outer and stitched both to the hat together by stitching through the base both at the same time, if that makes sense. To build the ears more securely you could try putting them together as I did by pushing the inner inside the outer, then stitching them together around the curve of the ear with something like a whip stitch using the brown wool. It'll be quite visible but if it's tidy should look fine.