Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins. Bravest little hobbit of them all.
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Once seen, cannot be unseen.

The pattern is for a 4- or 6-cup teapot, and mine is only about a 2-cup (18-oz Beehouse Saturn), so I needed to scale it down a bit. I used a smaller needle, and was going to eliminate some of the columns of the chart, but ended up not doing that since my teapot is short but wide.

Because the teapot is so short, I knew the cable pattern would be too big on it - so I had the clever (?) idea to shorten it by half. The chart doesn’t show the wrong side rows, only the right side ones. I knit the chart as if it had both rows, effectively eliminating all of the WS rows. It actually worked pretty well at making the center cable a good size, but I should have started it about an inch higher than I did, so that it would have been more centered in height on the teapot. But it was hard to tell where it was going to end up.

It wasn’t until I had a couple of inches done that it occurred to me that I should have probably done the side cables the way they were intended, with the cable every 6 rows instead of my half-size edition of every 3 rows. But by then I didn’t want to take it out and redo it, so I just continued with it the way it was.

Because I cut out half of the rows for the cable motif, I had to do more rows of ribbing at the top so that it would be tall enough to gather and tie.

I also made the base smaller (only increased to 48 sts), then did 2 purl rounds instead of casting off and picking up. On the increase round, increased to the correct number of stitches for the cable pattern.

For the steeks, I just cut slits that were big enough for the handle and spout - I didn’t cut them all the way up to the top. Then when I picked up the stitches around the edges, I worked them in the round.

For the tie, I just did a crochet chain of about 18 inches or so, and tied knots in the ends of them.

Despite all of the changes I made, some of which I wouldn’t do again, I think it turned out pretty cute.

The last photo was when I was taking some photos, and a ladybug kept trying to crawl onto the teapot. I kept moving it farther away, but the ladybug was pretty determined to get to it.