It may come as a surprise from perusing through pages of my crochet smiling creatures and sugary dessert recipes that I am a DIE-HARD football fan. As a Pittsburgh native, I have followed the Steelers for a large chunk of my almost-26 years; a loss has been known to ruin the rest of my day, while our Superbowl win a season-and-a-half ago was surreal, amazing, and *almost* anticlimactic. I can watch the Immaculate Reception on loop and get chills every time for one of the greatest plays in football history. (See it here!) Oh how I love it!

With that, it is probably not surprising that I came up with a crochet football beer cozy, to accompany the now off-season baseball cozy in my sports cozy collection. This one is very similar in pattern to the baseball one, but the embroidery part is slightly easier. Pattern is after the jump!

You will need a G hook, football-brown yarn, and white yarn.

With brown yarn:

Ch 2; 6 sc into 2nd chain from the hook
Ch 1; 2 sc into each ch; join with first sc (12 sc)
Ch 1; 2sc into same stitch, sc in next. Repeat (2sc, sc) all the way around; join with first sc (18 sc)
Ch 1; sc into same stitch, sc in next, 2sc into next. Repeat (sc, sc, 2 sc) all the way
around; join with first sc (24 sc)
Ch 2; sc into same stitch, sc in next, sc in next, 2 sc into next. Repeat (sc, sc, sc, 2 sc) all
the way around; join with first sc (30 sc)

This forms the base of the cozy. Turn the work so that the right size faces you (the right
side will be visible when you finish the cozy). From here on out, do not join.

For the next two rounds, sc around.
For the next two rounds, make decrease in each round. Check if it’s going to fit, by slipping it onto the bottom of a bottle.

Sc for approximately 13 more rows, but keep the bottle on hand to keep checking how it looks. Join and finish off.

The embroidered stitching is the hardest part b/c of all the straight lines. On a football, there is one long white line of stitching and eight small stitches that cut the line horizontally. Measure out these 8 lines with pins for a guide.

With white yarn and a needle, come up at the base of the cozy on the inside and go down at the top, staying about an inch away from the pins.

Slip it on the bottle to see how tight you should pull on the yarn. Pin the yarn at the top to the cozy if you want.

For the horizontal stitches, I lined them up with the pins and made each one 3/4 inch. After doing every two, slip the cozy onto the bottle to see if your stitches are straight. (It’s hard! I had to do it a couple times!)

Fasten off the yarn at the bottom, on the inside of the cozy. This will fit most 12-oz bottles and even fits cans!

ADDENDUM!: So, in making a few of these, another option is to do the sewing of white yarn while the cozy is on the bottle. Make the long vertical line with it off, but then slip the cozy back on the bottle. Make the horizontal “stitches” over top of the pins and take out each pin as you go along. I think this makes it easier to make everything as straight as possible, while being able to see how it will lay once on the bottle.

One of the prizes we receive is this adorable CRAFT shirt:

In other craft news, Superette is also selling my ice cream cones in their online store. I quickly bought more yarn and made six more in a crochet frenzy last week. Today, I noticed on the main page of their site that the ice cream cones are a “hot pick.” Woo-hoo! Here are the 6 strawberry-flavored friends getting ready for the big journey:

I have some exciting tutorials coming soon, and just yesterday I received my won Ebay auction of 44 yarns! I can’t wait to get started on some new design projects. I decided to look at each and every one, just before bed time. See a little Ian under all that yarn goodness?

You can watch the clip from the SF show, View from the Bay to see my baseball cozy in action…well, it’s comfortably holding a beer bottle. I got really excited watching it with Ian, as if my very own child just made their TV debut! “There he is!” I said! Also, take a look at Natalie’s Flickr Set for more close-up pictures of all the Stitch n’ Pitch items featured on the show.

And now for those who are going even further away, to London!

I was able to finish the bulk of the crochet items going to Superette, a store in London, while in the Outer Banks. Who gets to make the trip overseas: 8 strawberries, 6 strawberry ice cream cones, and 1 punnet. Exsqueeze me? (If you get that reference, you rock!) If you click on the link, you will learn that that is the British/Austrailian word for container of fruit. I had creative freedom with the punnet, and wish I had more time to experiment with forms, but the 2nd and last part of the shipment really had to go out today!

The strawberries and three ice cream cones were rather sad they had to depart from unknown territory (Corolla, NC) and travel without having said good-bye to all their crochet friends here at home, in New York. Especially when there is a possibility that they will be sold and given a new home in London or some other far-off land. I wish I had kept the first strawberry I designed, the one that got the “Ok!” from Leona at Superette. I never sell the first crochet items of any of my designs, because they are too near and dear to my yarn-lovin’ heart. I’ve said before that I always get a little sad when I sell something because all these little ones are my babies and I can’t be sure their new home will be as friendly. I hope I’m not too overprotective of a mom someday…

The last three ice cream cones and punnet DID get to leave from New York, so they got together with fellow crochet buddies before their grand send-off! Some of them were frowny and sad because they will surely miss the new additions to their ever-growing crochet family, but some were happy at the new opportunity: to be seen in a storefront window by passersby!!! They might make it big time. Little frowny balloon was especially melancholy and even tried to sneak in with ice cream cone #4 and punnet.

But, it was time to say good-bye to the little world travelers, as London awaits. The travelers are excited to reunite with strawberries #1-8 and ice cream cones #1-3, but I’ve had to keep reassuring them that no one on the planet eats crochet food, so have no worries. Punnet is especially thrilled to arrive in the country whose people actually understand what he is. “Americans,” he kept saying with a sigh. Hmm, what are we forgetting? Waterproof bag? Check! Oh, passport!!! (The peas remembered that one!)

I had a special request for the peas in a pod that I wrote about here previously. The buyer wanted three peas, not attached to the pod, and a darker green pod. I think it turned out really well!

Additionally, a store in London called Superette contacted me last week about my crochet foods: I’m making strawberry ice cream cones and strawberries (that I just designed for them!) for a really cool picnic store window, as well as for the store to purchase. My crochet foods are going to London!!!!

If that’s not exciting enough (!), my crochet baseball beer cozy is en route to San Francisco and is going to be on TV!!!! I entered it into the Stitch n’ Pitch contest, which is still being judged, and the blog writer/associate editor of CRAFT is appearing on a show called The View from the Bay to talk about Stitch n’ Pitch, as well as the contest, and some of the entries will be displayed. You can watch it online the following day!

It has been a busy last few days, and I have to take a lot of “work” with me to the beach because the London store deadline is July 27, which is quite soon when you take into account shipping time. But, luckily crochet is never really “work” for me and hopefully I will make progress as I wait at the airport and sit in the car for 4 hours.

I’m not sure which of these were more fun to make/grow from scratch:

(From our Brooklyn apt windowboxes)

I have been a long time baseball fan, even if the team I grew up rooting for is the poorly playing Pittsburgh Pirates. I also played softball, as a pitcher, for over ten years, and I was known by most of my team members and family to retain a serious face for the duration of the game, on and off the field. I had a lot of fun playing and I was very close to my team members in high school, but the pitcher always seems to be the most serious and steadfast of the bunch. I’ve got a hefty collection of stories from those days, but onto matters of the present:

Beer cozies! Last Christmas, I knitted a beer cozy for Ian in the Steelers’ colors. Since Pittsburgh teams always have the same colors, black and gold, it’s a versatile beer cozy!

Since I made that one, I’ve been meaning to design a crochet version, since I’m more partial to crochet these days (faster and easier to work in the round). I’ve also been meaning to enter the Stitch N’ Pitch contest, a contest for baseball-themed needlearts (knit, crochet, needlepoint, embroidery, and cross-stitch) that I saw on Craft.

You can choose to make something based (pun!) on general baseball themes, or something that refers to a particular baseball team. My idea was a crochet baseball beer cozy (first image). The white is crocheted in a ridge stitch, and I hand embroidered the red stitching with a silky yarn. As a sidenote, Stitch N’ Pitch is a really cool idea itself: needlearts and baseball fans go to games all summer and sit in the stands working on their wares. They’re going to a Pirates’ game in July! While I like the concept, I usually watch a live game with intensity, so I probably wouldn’t do any crochet, but who knows, maybe my crochet skills will get so impressive that I won’t need to look at my crochet while doing it.

I’m going to write up a pattern of the baseball beer cozy for my Etsy shop, but meanwhile here are some more pictures: