The intricate business of creating a coffee plunger cozy!

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I hope you’re all enjoying your sunday… many of my blog friends will be fast asleep (or out on the town!) as I type this… I was reflecting the other day, on how amazing it is to meet and keep in touch with so many people from all around the world, and follow their lives.  It makes me realise how isolated we are all the way down at the bottom of Mother Earth, and I am thoroughly enjoying watching your seasons change, I feel so much more… connected!  It’s great.  I hope you are all enjoying watching my winter turn into spring and not feel too many regrets about the changes you’re going through…  I promise to post many pictures of sunshiney happiness to warm you up on the inside in a few months time!

No sunshiney happiness is happening here today though!  It seemed like it might be a nice day, but by 8.30am a random rainstorm had happened, a gust of howling wind blew through (it has gone now) and the greyness set in.  KB and I hung out together all morning, all our windows steamed up… until we couldn’t take it anymore!  We got in the car and went to the supermarket… even though Sunday afternoon is the WORST time ever to go to Pak’n’Save!  We managed to escape without uttering too many swear words, and our cabin fever was gone!  Home we came as fast as we could!!!

I’m going to post the spoils of my morning stuck inside…  I didn’t make ALL of it today, some was last night too!  I’m not a crochet machine!  I really, really wanted to show you my crazy stripes hat, but I want to take the pictures outside, so that will have to wait until the rain has subsided.

I’m crazy about the colours I used, have you noticed by now that I totally get off on bright and beautiful colours!

Granny stripes have been happening…

And a matching mandala too!

Last night I really felt like getting some mandala action happening.  I was going to make one in many different shades of green, but it created itself into dazzling blues and turquoises and I’m pleased!  I love it! 

A couple of weeks ago, KB found a BRAND NEW Bodum coffee plunger at the op shop and snapped it up for $8 (yessssss!) and we were happy about that because the one we bought a few months ago had already broken.  However, this one is huge and the skull coffee plunger cozy I made the old plunger, didn’t fit this new one, so I decided to hook one out of these stunning colours this morning.  I cannot stand luke-warm plunger coffee, it’s bad news in my world, and plunger cozies work a treat.  So how about a wee tutorial?

I’ve made so many things from the Lovely Lucy’s granny stripe pattern I’ve remembered it off by heart!  It’s wonderful, thank you Lucy!  To begin, I made a piece to fit my plunger, (make it in granny stripes or whatever you prefer…)

 … making sure it didn’t meet at the back, then edged it in a different colour with single crochet…

Then I edged this piece with a pretty shell stitch… It’s a bit more delicate than the big shell stitch I usually use… after I joined my single crochet round with a slip stitch, I chained one, then into the next stitch, 1 sc, 1hdc, 1 sc, slip stitch into the next 3 stitches… repeat around and around and around… Lovely!

By this stage in the creative process I was getting very, very excited!  I’ve discovered that coffee plunger cozies stretch, so I created a device to stop them slipping off the plunger!  (It’s so technical  ha ha)… check it out!

Simple it seems!  But so utterly necessary!  I joined the wool with a slip stitch to the top of the cozy and chained a few stitches until it JUST reached the other side.  Remember if you make one, it will stretch!  I slip stitched it to the other side and single crocheted back across the chain to make it nice and strong.

THEN!  (It’s such an involved process isn’t it!)  Then I made the tie-up part at the back.  The first two plunger cozies I made (this is my 4th) I used buttons and loops which looked so pretty!  But when you are constantly taking the cozy off to wash the plunger, you get really p**sed off with the pretty buttons and loops, so I now create a tie on either side of the cozy which works like a charm!

Ta daaaaa!!!!

This is turning into quite a long post!  I’m sure you noticed that the mandala was the same colour as the plunger… well, I’m quite partial to matching things, and thought that it might be nice to have them matching for coffee drinking occasions!

I LOVE this mandala.  I’m wondering if it’s my favourite yet, or if that’s just because it’s new.  KB is a very talented painter, and she taught me about blending colours.  So I took it on board and have been blending my wool in the same way she blends her paints when I make my mandalas. 

Here’s one of that lovely mini shell stitch…

And one more gratuitous shot of mandala-licious-ness!

Getting home from the supermarket was the best… especially sitting down for a coffee and testing it all out!

Complete and utter fun!

I hope you enjoyed that colour therapy!  I’m off to upload them onto my ravelry page! woo hoo!  Ravelry is the best!   Then after that, I’m going to be highly disciplined!  I am giving a 30 minute (plus 15 minutes for questions) presentation tomorrow at 9.15am for one of my polytech classes.  I get reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllly nervous when I have to do public speaking, so I’m going to get myself well prepared and practiced!  And start imagining all of my classmates in their underwear… or maybe not…

Have a lovely beginning to your week everyone, and thank you so much for popping in,

lots of love from Alice and Raymond XXX

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