It's finished! Last night I got my tea cozy done! It only took me almost 6 months, but it's really done now!

The tea cozy is FiberTrends Nanny Mier's Tea Cozy pattern by Amelia Carlson that my Mom bought me a few years ago after I saw a tea cozy very similar to this in a little boutique tea shop. She intending to knit it for me, but life got busier, time passed, and I learned to knit. So I started this project myself on a road trip. Then a knot in my yarn (that was there when I bought it) came untied, I got frustrated with how to fix it when it droped some stitches and I had two loose ends of yarn, so I set it aside for several months while I finished my Christmas presents. I picked it up a couple weeks ago, fixed the spot and continued, finally finishing every last touch on the 16th!
It's really thick and insulating due to the carried yarn and the ridges, but it's just worked in garter stitch! That's right folks, knit eightysix turn knit eightysix turn knit eightysix turn knit eightysix turn knit eighty six turn knit eightysix turn knit eigh-... I think the only thing that kept me from going out of my mind with boredom was switching the colors every 6 stitches, I'd never done 2 color work before (besides horizontal stripes, and verigated, but that's not what I mean and you know it :-P) so that was something new.

For the tea cozy itself I got by on only one purple skein- here was my left over:
(the red skein on the other hand didn't behave so well, it got used entirely and I had to tie on a new skein near the end)

I did have to dip into my second purple skein for the flowers though :-P the remnant of the first only did about 2 petals.

OK! so finally, as promised, the pictures of the finished project!
Betty's feeling much more comfortable about posing for these pictures, and she's considerably warmer, no more shivering teapots here!

*MC voice* Betty's sporting a tight fitting little red and purple number done in garter stitch out of superwash merino, toped in a lovely little floral motif. She'll keep warm in style this winter, with thick ribbing and an extra insulating layer of yarn!

A bird eye view of the foliage;

The flowers are April 24th's pattern "Small Simple Flower" in the 2006 Pattern-A-Day calendar, and the leaves are the holly leaves from Nicky Epstein’s Knitting Over The Edge

I had to make it so that the decoration is tied on underneath and I could remove it before washing, the rest of the tea cozy is in super wash merino (Online Linie21: Marly), but the leaves are made of some alpaca sock yarn remnants (sooooo soft). So unless I want felted leaves, I can't just drop them in the wash like I can the rest of the cozy.

Mom says the colors in the photo don't do the tea cozy justice, I had a lot of trouble getting a true color photograph of these two colors, the purple looked too blue and the red looked too pink... some color tweaking in photoshop helped, but it's still off a little, the leaves should be a nice deep forest green, and the red should be a sort of merlot-red color, the purple is pretty much the same as in the picture, but richer.

The cozy itself turned out a little smaller and tighter on my teapot than I would have liked, but that's my fault, even though the stockinette gauge was right, I underestimated how much this particular yarn would spring up into the garter stitch, and how much it would hold those ribs. It's a wonderful yarn for socks though!

About the Model: Betty is a true English Brown-Betty teapot, she came to the states with my Sister and Brother-in-law when they returned home from their honeymoon to Wales, and was given to me the following Christmas.