Iron Craft: Get Cozy

This week's Iron Craft challenge was to make a coffee cozy. I think this was a great challenge because these coffee cozies are reusable alternatives to those cardboard sleeves that come with every single cup of coffee bought at a coffeehouse. Also, I was itching to knit something.

I had seen the ones that Kat made last year and envied her fine work. I was thrilled to see this for the week's challenge and had big dreams.

Big, big dreams.

To say I got obsessed with this challenge would not be far from the truth.

Did these dreams materialize? Somewhat. Am I entirely happy with the results. No. But I did it and I am sharing what I completed AND I plan to use the ones that I made.

Please excuse the blurriness of this photo. I had a couple glasses of wine. And let me tell you, wine does make knitting a little difficult, especially because I decided to do a fair isle pattern.

I attempted to edge the sleeve with ribbing, but that was not working. I was struggling with the DPN needles, the cat trying to eat the yarn and the Baby Lotus Bud tugging on my sleeve. After several failed attempts, I decided to move forward without it.

I wanted to make something that would remind me that Spring was on it's way. Flowers were the way to go. It seemed to work because after a week of single digit temperatures, the temps rose as I was working on these sleeves. We actually got above 20 and that sure seems like a heat wave!

The floral pattern comes from toys to knit which includes a pattern for a teddy bear. I made the teddy before the Baby Lotus Bud was born and I named him Teddy Marley. I have not made him a sweater yet, instead I used the design for the coffee cozy.



This challenge forced me to seriously think about gauging my stitches because I had to think about creating as I went along. While I am sort of happy about this, I thought the colors didn't pop like I wanted. So, I tried again.



Unfortunately, this time the gauge was off so the coffee cozy turned out too long and little loose. The Big D called it "overkill".

So of course, I couldn't stop there. I made one for him and this time I finally figured the gauge right.



In this last one I decided to get that ribbing down. I tried and tried and tried again (yes, three times) with the other cozies I made, but it just wasn't happening for some reason. I tried it before the wine so I can't blame it on alcohol.

I'm pretty happy with this last one. The Big D took it into work yesterday and because he was running late, he picked up coffee rather than bringing it from home. Apparently it was a hit with his co-workers. The Big D works for an organic, environmentally-conscious company so there were many people who appreciated the reusable sleeves. There have been requests! Now I have to find the time to make some for others. But these knit up fairly quickly (now that I've got the pattern down) so I might be able to sell some of my knits.

The question is: Am I crafty enough? Indeed I am ! Now I just have to find the time!