Thursday, January 29, 2009

Tea and Toast...or Why I Don't So Much Do Cozies

Sometimes, thank God, luxury is cheap. Particularly now that it's cold, I like to make myself tea and toast in the afternoon when I get back home from class. Lunch is wearing off about that point, and I'm cold and could use a subtle caffeine hit. In addition to fairly low levels of caffeine, tea contains l-theanine, a sedative compound naturally found in the body. This makes tea, in my experience, the perfect after-school drink. It relaxes you while it revives you. It won't make you feel wired and jittery, and it won't lead to a caffeine crash later on. And then what's not to like about sourdough toast with honey and blueberry jam? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Quick and easy and cheap and yum.

I really like my teapot. It's a nice cobalt blue that I think sets off my dishes nicely, and it holds enough for you to have tea even when you're not alone! I really like using it, and this is why I'm never going to knit a tea cozy. It's not that I object to cozies themselves (although I have heard from admitted tea snobs that they "stew the tea." I'm not 100% sure what that means). But why would I want to hide such a nice thing as my teapot behind some flouncy, squooshy dish-sweater?

I avoid tea cozies for the same reason I avoid tablecloths. My roommates have a really nice dining-room table made out of rich, dark wood. Why would you want to cover that up? I love the look of wood (although what you see pictured is "birch veneer," courtesy of Ikea. It's fake, but I still like the look of it). I suppose if you happen to prefer the look of lace to the look of wood, it would make sense to strew your surfaces with doilies and cloths. I prefer the surfaces themselves. I love the texture you can see in a smooth piece of wood. I love the way the light plays off of the shiny surface of my teapot. I guess I could go for a table-runner, as long as it didn't detract from the look of the wood.

There seems to be a cozy-craze afoot in the world of knitting at present. If you look hard enough, you can find a pattern for a knitted object that will fit nicely around anything. That just seems a bit excessive to me. Maybe it's just that my aesthetic happens not to involve covering things, but can't we think of something useful to knit? Is a layer of yarn really going to protect your iPod if you drop it on the sidewalk? Is your decoratively floral box of kleenexes really so hideous that it needs its own ruffly sweater? I thought I'd seen the cozy-craze at its worst when I found this ice-cream pint cozy, but then an image flashed into my head: I'm blundering toward the freezer in the dead of night. I need ice-cream. All I want is to stand next to the freezer blearily devouring ice-cream from the carton, but my hands...dear Gods, I can't feel my hands!!! That sweet, treacherous ice-cream has frozen them completely numb. So I'm willing to admit that the ice-cream pint cozy is absolute genius.

This cozy-craze is delightfully expressed by the character Emerson Cod in the shamefully canceled series "Pushing Daisies." Emerson is a tough, cynical PI with a heart of stone. He is also a stress-knitter. His office is filled with objects wearing little object-sweaters - there is a file-holder cozy, a pencil-holder cozy, he even tucks wads of cash away in a drawer, lovingly arranged in little green money cozies. It's the juxtaposition inherent in this image that tickles me. It's why I get a kick out of knitting a sweater on the bus with my rapier leaning against my seat. And it's why I am so pleased that this motorcycle cozy exists!

9 comments:

  1. Don't forget Emerson's knitted holsters!

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  2. Stewing tea is overcooking it according to my friends in the UK. I only use tablecloths and such when I think there is a risk of the wood getting stained or rings. Family pot lucks where hot dishes will be sitting on my table sweating is one of those times. I am also not a fan of cozies or doilies... Especially toilet paper cozies designed to look like a doll's dress.... WTF? http://www.crochetnmore.com/toiletpaperdollcover.htm

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  3. Robin: So is stewing tea the same as over-steeping it, which is what happens when you let it steep for too long or in water that's too hot? It seems that a cozy just keeps the tea warm longer. Does that mean that my tea will stew in the summer at my mother's house in TX that she keeps rather warm v at my place in WI where we wear sweaters in Jan? It just seems like a rather vague and unscientific accusation to me.

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  4. That is an intriguing question. I have sent it to my friends in the UK for clarification. They have very strict ideas on how to properly make tea and I am sure we will get all the specifics.

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  5. By the way, that's a great picture for someone who doesn't "have an expensive digital camera with which to take gloriously luxurious pictures of my finished projects."

    It really is.

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  6. D - By the way, that's a great picture for someone who doesn't "have an expensive digital camera with which to take gloriously luxurious pictures of my finished projects."

    It really is.


    Composition makes a lot more difference than what you're shooting with. I tend to think more about composition when I'm looking through an SLR.

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  7. I saw a pattern for a SOFTBOILED EGG COZY yesterday. I shit you not.

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  8. P and D: Aw, thanks! If this picture (and any that follow it) really are half-way decent, it's just proof that nice pictures can be taken with a crappy cell-phone camera. I feel that's very much in the spirit of this blog. :-)

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  9. I'm a little bemused by the cozy-phenomenon myself... They seem so "little-ol'-lady" to me. I did see the motorcycle cozy and thought it was a hoot. Utter waste of time but still pretty funny.

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