The Blooming Great Tea Cosie

At last I can show you my tea cosie for the Crochet Now Magazine competition, in partnership with Marie Curie and their Blooming Great Tea Party. The closing date for entries was yesterday, so I think I'm safe to let you have a little peak now!

I finally finished making it on Sunday and emailed my entry off the next day - then I emailed it again to the correct email address!! I'm sure there will be lots of other entries far nicer than mine and I hope they manage to show a few in a future issue, as well as the winners. I do like to see other people's work and see what they did.

Initially, I was going to try and make a cake stand with 2 tiers of cakes, (somehow) surrounding the tea pot. But I left it so late before making a start there wasn't time. So instead I decided to go for a Marie Curie Blue body  - I'm sure lots of others did too... - and then add a circle of flowers around the top  - again, that's probably a common theme... - and to finish it off, a plate of biscuits balanced on top. I even managed to use quite a few Sirdar yarns which I found in my stash, although I had to buy the blue for the body especially.
I wasn't overly happy with my flowers at first - I went for 2 big pink and 2 white roses, but they looked rather flat and lifeless. I thought about trying to add some colour to them and was going to embroider french knots in the centres, then I remembered I still had the beads that had belonged to a friend I lost to cancer and it seemed quite fitting to use them instead. They lifted the roses just enough I think. I added quite a few leaves as well, plus of course the daffodil that had to appear somewhere in every entry.
My plate of biscuits had a little bit of stiffening inside to help give it a slight curved shape and my biscuits were realistic enough that several people tried to pinch one thinking they were real!! There was even a simple white lace doily on the plate as well.

Then I added a butterfly as personal recognition of Sue of SIBOL - she makes, collects and distributes blankets to the elderly in nursing homes; and some forget-me-nots for Sheila of Flowers for Memories - she's raising funds for the Alzheimers Society.

I do wonder if I actually added too much and have "guilded the lily" so to speak but it's done now and can't be changed.

So here she is, in all her glory -

Not sure what to do with her now. Maybe I'll get in touch with the local branch of Marie Curie again and see if they'd like her for a raffle prize or something.


OOH!! I've just thought, before I go would you like to see the latest addition to the family?? My great niece Amelia has finally arrived and is absolutely adorable!! Although, to be completely honest, I've only seen her asleep so far. We tried very hard to wake her up to say hello but she refused to even open one eye! Here she is, under the Tooty Fruity Blanket I made her -

That's it for today - see you again soon, T  x