Lankadontti Tea Sock

I love tea. I can wake up and lie in bed just tickled all shades of pink, red and purple - knowing that there is tea in my near future. Tea is, contrary to common belief, the drink of the gods. Nectar? Pah! Wine? Whatever... Tea? Oh, YES! I have myself quite a collection of tea. In fact, it may be taking over my kitchen. The only actual item on our wedding registry was a Samovar (well, an option to donate funds towards purchasing one).

To prove my point about loving tea, here is an old photo of our tea shelves. The cupboard filled with tea to the right is not visible. And this photo is from late summer, early fall 2010 - there is more tea today...

But wait! What is that white thing hanging among the tea strainers from the custom-made-by-Fuzzband tea paraphernalia hanging spot? (Note second shelf, also custom made by Fuzzband.) It is a tea sieve!

Here is a vaguely fuzzy closeup.

In addition to loving tea, I love my friends. And as luck would have it, I have many very crafty friends and relatives. One of these crafty friends is Laura of Lankadontti-fame. Lankdadontti is a wonderful online artisnal boutique that specializes in crafts based on Finnish traditional textile, and some other, crafts. The company has a crafts-blog, Sanavyyhti, with a monthly pattern, or tutorial. The tea sieve is the April 2009 tutorial. (Och samma på finska.)

This was great fun to knit - I used some left-over cotton yarn that emigrated with me from Finland. The problem was that I did not find, or did not have the energy to do so, food-grade metal wire strong enough to make the ring at the top. Laura and her husband gave me one in the summer of 2010 - and there was much rejoicing, believe your me! The best thing about returning to New Haven, CT, was that now I could use it to make tea!

The sieve fits perfectly into my Danish white ceramic tea pot, and is now pretty much the color you would expect cotton dipper into strong tea several times a week for a few years would. Some day I will make more of these, but for now it is my favorite tea accessory, and every time I use it I am reminded of how much fun it was to knit it; how great a friend and teacher Laura is; and that soon, very soon, there is ready steeped tea. What could possibly be better - except having tea with Laura while crafting! Too bad there is a pesky puddle called the Atlantic between us...

Expect to see more from Lankadontti and Sanavyyhti among Random Thistles!