A couple of weeks ago I was packing a lunch with about 20 minutes to go till I had to leave the house. I'd bought a mini carton of milk and I was heating soup, and it was when I went to the freezer for a little ice pack to keep the milk cold that I realized I had a very big problem.
Even though the soup was going into an insulated bottle from Kleen Kanteen (no plastic touches the soup, no flavour is retained, no way would I ever give these things up now that I've found them), could it really stay warm with an ice pack pressed up against the outside of it? And if it didn't, how disgusting was cold tomato soup going to taste when you were anticipating hot? And more importantly, did I want to find out?
This is where being a crafty person with questionable priorities comes in handy.
Assets:
1/ about 10 free minutes
2/ two felted sweaters that survived the latest basement purge just a few days before, because they had 'Easter colours' and Easter was coming up
3/ two shades of lengthy sock yarn scraps still sitting on the kitchen counter from the emergency cast-on I'd done for socks also a few days before when facing an empty bag of travel knitting
4/ a darning needle in a location I actually remembered, and the same for sewing scissors
I was cursing myself for that felted sweater purge as I ran down the stairs to the basement, but actually it was lucky because I might not have remembered exactly where I was storing those things if I hadn't just seen them. I grabbed the one on top - luckily, both had felted in to a thick but pliable fabric - and raced back up to kind of fit it over the bottle for a sense of size. Then I cut out a rectangle, freehand, using the stripey design of the fabric as a guide.
Would you believe, it turned out to be exactly 12.5" wide by 5" tall? This is for the 12-oz bottle, by the way - there are larger sizes, and one smaller.
Then I decided on how much overlap I needed and got stitching, having chosen the dark green yarn that matched a stripe in the sweater.
Even rushed, I still go for the matchy.
As you can see, I was not fussy about the way the stitching or finishing looks on the wrong side. The clock was ticking! (and it wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't because I've learned that graceful stitching is not my forte even given all the time in the world.)
Fit like a charm.
And it worked like one, too!
Now if only I hadn't gotten rid of all that felted wool, because how great is that for a unisex gift idea, pairing a soup bottle with its own five-minute sweater? Or less, even, if you did them by assembly line and used a sewing machine for prettier finishing.
h'mmmm.... maybe I need to go thrift shopping again, and restock...
(or just get back into bed with more very hot tea.)
Have a terrific weekend everybody and I'll see you Monday!
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