Danido Crafty » Continuing the "Knitting for Coffee Cups" trend…

Last night while watching “Chuck” and Adult Swim I decided that I wanted to knit a reusable java jacket. For those of you who are not wholly addicted to caffeine, a java jacket is usually the thin flap of card board that coffee houses slap around a cup of coffee that is usually at least 160 degrees. The card board, obviously, does very little to actually insulate either the hot coffee to keep it warm, or your fingers from getting burned. They also are a huge waste of paper since most people toss them with the cups when they are done.

Since I’m one of those tree hugger types who tries really hard to find little ways to live a ‘greener’ life, I decided it would be more cost effective and environmental of me to knit one that I could take on and off at will. So I came up with this:

I did a little eyelet thingy on each side of the rows with makes a kind of feathered texture at those ends. It’s nothing fancy, but it does add a little tiny bit of something around the edges. I think from now on when I need to do swatches, I’ll probably make the swatches into these so at least they’re useful.

It’s fully adjustable, with just three buttons sewn onto the body of it. I knit it long enough to fit around my widest cafe style mug that I have here, then the second button fits around a normal sized coffee mug (pictured) and the third button fits around a standard to go cup from a coffee house.

I used mismatched buttons because, quite frankly, I didn’t have three brown buttons that matched. I should probably run to the fabric shop today if I’m going to make more of these.

Flat, this is what it looks like. It’s basically just a rectangle with two little flat on each end, one end has a button hole, the other end has the buttons.

The flaps cross over and are thin enough to fit underneath the handle on a coffee mug.

I like it, it works well to keep the tea warm for longer and to keep the cup from burning my fingers. I suppose it could be worn in conjunction with the teacup handle sweater but that might look a bit silly.

Okay, that’s enough frivolousness for this morning. Off to fix more for my real job. Happy knitting ya’ll!