Tea cosies

I read an artist profile in a SA magazine "Stitches 'n Bears" featuring Loani Prior, aka Queen of the tea cosies. When asked where she lives, this was her comment, "A bloke and a cat keep me company on two and a half acres in the hills about fifteen minutes from Noosa. It is Friday afternoon and the rainbow lorikeets are making a racket over the seed in the feeder on the varandah. We might escape them in an hour and go to Hastings Street for a little apperitif. It's a hard life. Noosa is a well loved tourist spot on the Sunshine Coast less than a two-hour frive North of Brisbane. It is hardly a knitting sort of climate but I'm not complaining."

Ms Prior knits tea cosies - weird and wonderful and colourful tea cosies and is totally obsessed with this activity.

And then when the interviewer asked her to give an account of her "stash" (of wool that is!) this is what she had to say "the Stash is an enviable one. It oozes out of its colour coded containment into the lounge room. It has a particular fondness for the large coffee table, the dining table, my office desk. It has on occasion been known to take up residence on the kitchen bench. Only the threat of guests can coax it back into organised bliss. All that gathering and sorting is done to bring on the design ideas all in a rush and the very next day the oozing starts all over again. The cat is trained within an inch of its life to ignore it and the bloke has the "can't see it unless it is under my nose" gene so all is well. Who'd a thought that would ever be a desireable trait?"

Any girl who lives with a Stash will identify with this immediately!

I found this article so delightful. The Queen of the Tea Cosies has a very special style of writing. Her Wild Tea Cosies, is now a best selling book.