A Change of Brew

My second creation was for my little one-and-a-half cup pot. I saw this little 'tea-set' one Christmas and said to my husband that I thought it was sweet, and it ended up in my presents. The pattern in Tea Cozies 2 was for a standard size teapot, but I managed to "guesstimate" it down to size. By some good chance, I had some leftover wool from another project which worked perfectly for this little cupcake cosy.

At this point, I was really getting bitten by the creative bug. One of the problems with knitting these days, though, is finding wool stores. The other is that using a book published in the UK means trying to find equivalent wools in Australia, which is not always easy. Fortunately, the internet is generally a reasonable source of answers for this sort of thing. So, letting my fingers do the walking, I found a wool shop not too far away, and headed on down one Saturday morning to browse and get inspired. I came home with wool for another two tea cosies that I thought I would enjoy making. So the third one was the Purple Berry, partly because I found some wool I thought would work, and partly because the pattern was quite an unusual stitch that I'd never done before and I wanted to experiment. Although it called for knitting with two strands at once, because the wool was actually a heavier weight than the pattern, this seemed to produce a quite tight/stiff cosy, so I used a single strand instead. I think it turned out ok.

Starting this hobby is quite amusing to me. As a child, tea drinking was quite an integral part of my family life, so me being a non-tea drinker was a source of concern or at least cause for comment. Being the not only the middle child but also the only girl in five children, I already felt somewhat on the outer, and perhaps there was something of the perverse in me to extend those differences. Or perhaps it was because I was the first to definitely fall into the ranks of being Gen X, the generation of 'question everything' and so, I did not accept that just because it was 'normal' or 'accepted practice', that I had to conform. What a rebel!

However, there was a definite issue with me not drinking tea in at least my wider family and I have a fond memory of my grandma who felt that drinking tea was an important social grace that I did need to conform to. She despaired so much of my lack in this area that when I was staying with her at age 11, she decided that if I just drank some tea, I would get to the point of enjoying it. I remember her suggesting I add more sugar which, to me, simply made it taste like sweet dishwashing water. By my late teens, however, I found that I was actually more normal than I realised, having a number of other friends who drank neither tea or coffee. And my life as a non-tea drinker continued quite happily.

But, here I am, to all indicators of my early life, doing something totally unexpected and surprising. Perhaps it is a sign of (finally) growing up, or perhaps it is simply a normal part of the maturing process. Is there anything that you do now that no one would ever have expected from your childhood? Maybe yours is a little more exciting or unusual. I'd love to hear from you.