Last-Minute

I do it almost every year – start making a time-consuming, hand-crafted Christmas gift just days before Christmas.

This year it’s a tea cosy.  Yes, that’s with an “s” rather than a “z.”  If you do your homework, you’ll find out tea cosies are very British in origin, and this is their spelling. 

I recently learned in the 1800’s, afternoon tea became an important time for British statesmen to talk over politics, and if the tea got cold, their sessions were cut short.  Hot tea, however, kept the conversation going, so tea cosies came into being. The idea caught on, and the rest is history.

British tea-lovers are currently very zealous and protective of the norms surrounding their knitted cosies.  These hat-like teapot covers are always made of wool with a ribbed pattern to provide pockets of air, and thus greater insulation.  Any other material and pattern, they say, is dissent.  And woe to the dissenters who make cosies out of acrylic in less-than-insulative patterns, usually Americans.  According to Brits in the know, those  dissidents don’t know what they’re doing, how they’re desecrating tradition.

So I decided to do it right.  I researched British cosies and selected a pattern that is considered authentic.  I purchased three colors of wool, lovely tweedy stuff that looks like it grew on sheep that had grazed on England’s moors.  The question remains: will my cosy be finished by Christmas?  I can’t answer that.  Yet.