Sheep Carousel: St-eek!

Another photo tutorial of me trying new things, this time it's steeking!

The competition for the Highland Wool Festival in Dingwall weekend before last was a knit or crochet tea/coffee cosy and as I've been meaning to knit Kate Davies' Sheep Carousel I went for it. I used some stash leftover from knitting her Sheep Heid back in 2011 (there's now a kit so you don't have to buy a full skein of every colour). Sheep Carousel involves Fair Isle stranded colourwork, which obviously I'd done before, and two techniques new to me: Latvian Braids and steeking.

It knit up really quickly; the braids made perfect sense and are really cute, and steeking turned out to only be a little bit eek-y:

Unsteeked teapot:

Steek panel:

Crochet reinforcement:

Cutting! Eek!

Neatly bound edges:

Repeat on the other side, then I whip stitched the steek panels to the inside. I didn't bother with ribbon edging as I figured it wouldn't get a lot of use. It didn't fit our tea pots - they have a lip like a jug, not a spout like the pattern assumes, and after a cursory search in local charity shops didn't lead to an appropriate tea pot, I decided to donate it to the silent auction. Chris gave me an automatic teapot for Christmas so I really don't need another one just to model my cosy. And no, I didn't win anything in the contest.

I did see a model a great deal cuter than any teapot whilst there, though: Little Djinn in the RipplesCrafts booth sample of Ysolda's Wee Melia. She didn't want to take it off and give it back, so of course I had to buy enough to make one she can keep in a rich orange (sample is Warm Gold).