This is my favourite teapot. It’s quite small, ancient and was once lovely lustreware in a camely-metallicy-beige, but is now a bit dull in places. It is quite well used though, and goodness knows how old as I found it at a table sale one day about, ooooh, 20 years ago.

This is a lovely, lovely camel at the Oasis Camel Centre in Suffolk. I have a bit of a thing about camels (and goats and llamas and alpacas – I think it’s the eyes and those noses). I do not think they smell bad, am not in the least traumatised by the fact that they might spit (which is what lots of people say) and am not frightened by them. Here I am with another camel:

What, I hear you cry, has any of this wittering to do with knitting? Well, I give you this:

A knitted camel tea cosy! Isn’t it just the best tea cosy ever? Seen in the window of Yarn on the Square in Ely a couple of weeks ago when I was meeting best friend who lives in Norwich at a vaguely halfway-point for a bit of a day out. Yes, I know Ely is not really halfway between Norwich and London but it is a really lovely city and easier to park in than Cambridge, so it’s a Good Place To Go. Anyway. Yarn on the Square had a whole window display of tea cosies that they were auctioning off for charity so I just had to go in and bid on this one. And I won it! So yesterday we went back to Ely to collect it (and have lunch with another pal whilst we were there, even I’m not daft enough to do a 140 mile round trip just for a tea cosy). I love that his head and neck are a spout cosy but what really, really really made me want him (apart from the sheer camel-ness) were the little bells on his saddle blanket.

Just how cool are they?

I have no idea who knitted him, but many, many thanks for doing so if you ever read this. Yarn on the Square is a really lovely yarn shop, do pop in if you’re ever in Ely. I was very stupid yesterday and spent so much time nattering I didn’t ask the name of the lovely lady I was nattering to but it must have been either Christine or Ginette who own and run YotS. Their Bitch and Knit night is currently knitting vegetables for Ely Cathedral’s Harvest Festival. Normally I don’t go in for knitted cakes, veg etc being strictly a garment / cushion / blanket girl myself, but these veg were amazing too:

I was particularly taken with the blackberry which was beautifully beaded. I might even knit one at some point.

Here at TBk we do like our soft furnishings (and not only because sometimes in the past we had to replace them frequently sometimes because of, erm, ‘interference’ by Ev and her super-sharp teeth). So, when Juliet of The Knitter phones with a specific ‘I want a cushion based on African mud prints and I want it to have beads on’ request – well, we quite like that too.

So here it is in the current issue of The Knitter – issue 34. Knitted in Sublime’s truly sublime Cashmere Merino Silk DK with a few beads thrown in for good measure. And some mini bobbles to minimize the number of beads.

Just so you’re not overloaded with intarsia and bobbles and beads, it has a nice stripey back too.

Despite the intarsia and the bobbles and the beads it’s a fairly quick knit, and not too challenging really. You could always leave off the beads and just replace them with more mini bobbles. There are lots of colours available in the Cashmere Merino Silk so it’s quite an adaptable design too – easily re-coloured to suit your own settee. PLus it’s such a lovely cushy yarn it makes the intarsia a pleasure to knit.

All these pics are me photographing the pics from The Knitter, so please excuse the odd shine on surface that’s visible in a couple of them.