Tesla Coil is obsessed with tea. Whenever we visit tea shops, she stands there drooling over the beautiful teapots they have on display. But they’re all so expensive, especially for poor college students. So for her birthday I found a teapot online that was just as good, but much cheaper, with the intention of crocheting a teapot cozy for it. I thought long and hard for an idea for a tea cozy and one day, I looked at the teapot I had bought and saw Totoro:

Unfortunately I was unable to finish the tea cozy in time for her birthday, so I gave her the teapot and then gave her the teapot cozy later:

Totoro’s body is made from the stretchy stitch I wrote about earlier in this blog. I made the length of a row the height of the teapot and then single crocheted in the back loops only to create the ribbed, knitted look. I left slits for the handle and the spout. I then fit the cylinder over the teapot and crocheted around the sides to close one end of the cylinder. Since the teapot’s lid was flush against the top of the teapot, I just made a half sphere for Totoro’s head and stuffed the space with fiberfill. I added ears, nose and eyes (which are just white fabric with black dots) and made a white circle for his belly.

Tesla was ecstatic. She used the teapot with the tea cozy every day until one day, someone put the tea cozy on the teapot without washing it out and it grew the nastiest, carnivorous-looking mold ever. Tesla ended up throwing the teapot out and now is currently looking for the same teapot that fits Totoro.