Egg Cosy, Fluted Pattern

This pattern comes from Weldon’s Practical Knitter, Number 49, Twelfth Series (1890). It is also published in Weldon’s Practical Needlework, Volume 5, Interweave Press, 2001.

The original pattern called for “single Berlin wool,” and “Four steel knitting needles No. 16” (modern equivalent 1.75mm/US 00.) “The edging should be worked with “a fine bone crochet needle.”

I first started this egg cosy in Paternayan crewel wool, but ran out of the blue, which, along with white, were the colours, “used in our model,” even though it is a black and white illustration. The project was then abandoned for a few years until recently, in this Year of Completion, when I started second one in Knit Picks Palette’s Whirlpool and White on the same sized needles as suggested in the pattern.

This is fairly easy and quick to make but the open-weave interior is the key to its structure. The pattern clearly states that in the body of the cosy, the alternate strands of wool in the knitting “must be rather tightly (but not too tightly) drawn in, just sufficiently so as to make the knitting sit in “flutes.”  I quite like the idea of the knitting sitting in flutes.

A “tuft” or pom-pom was made after threading through the stitches and closing the top. Since I cannot really crochet, I did not follow the pattern for the crocheted edge but simply worked a double line of single crochet around the bottom of the cosy.

At the conclusion of the pattern, directions are given for making a matching tea cosy.