Knitting Hard for Warmth.

Mum (creator of the Zombies, embroidered iPhone case, Advent Calendar, Kindle cover  cross-stitched Sage Francis pieces and penises!) has pulled off yet another knit-tastic piece with her woollen cover for our hot water tank!

Although insulated, our tank doesn’t have an airing or linen cupboard and we’d started to notice that it lost way too many degrees overnight. When your hot water is generated solely through the wood you burnt in the wood burner the night before, and can’t be ’topped up’ with gas, this is a big deal.

There was a huge amount of calculation, mockup-making and working-out of the possible problems and logistics before she could even think about the knitting part. We all had a go at designing it - me, Leigh, Graham, but in the end, she worked it out herself. Just as she used to make my dolls’ clothes, by sitting the doll on her knee and basically starting to knit round her, so the same system was applied to the tank. Knit the top, knit the main hanging parts, then sit by the tank and knit the other bits to fit, starting with a medusa-like network of copper pipes (bit of a theme lately those things!)

Then there were agonies over the colours. Our bathroom is all white with a bit of turquoise on the fireplace. I wanted white, Leigh fancied primary colours; Mum wasn’t sure. Then Leigh hit upon the idea of the colours of electrical cables for the pipes, which are pretty distinctive, with an all-white tank. She started knitting sock-like tubes in an array of stitches for the pipes, offering them up as they were completed, and then The Massive Needles, the like of which we’d never seen before, arrived of the rest of the tank.

Here’s how the finished tank looks complete with surprise residents. And yes - it’s solved the problem of heat loss overnight! It was a mega-effort. Thanks Mum!
(She can’t stop, by the way - she actually can’t. She’s done me a white crocheted bed blanket since…)