Great British Baking Show Tea Towels

The Great British Baking Show has all sorts of tea towels, and as I identify them I'll post them here, or I'll possibly keep this post very sheep centric. You read that right. The first tea towel to catch my eye for its unrivaled cuteness is the Penny Sheep Tea Towels. Tasha has been using these in season 14 as a kind of cure-all for messes and keeping things orderly.

The Penny Sheep tea towels are 100% cotton, have a loop for hanging (you can see the hanging at the end of the benches during judging), measure 50x70 cm (20x27.5 inches), and are machine washable. I'm not sure what else you'd want in a tea towel.

Instead of asking why these towels made it into the tent, lets just lean on the fact they're tea towels, and they have cute sheep on them! Oops, answered our own question.

Let's let our UK friends have a second to laugh at some good ol' fashioned American Ignorance... And breathe. Okay lets do this.

A tea towel is a towel measuring exactly 50 x 70 cm and containing no less than 15% fibers derived from tea tree trunks as described by the Bill of Act on 16 May, 1800. They can have colored threads only dyed by a non-alkaline salt based full immersion process. I'm just kidding - none of that is true, but for a second you questioned tea towels...

Basically a tea towel is a kitchen towel. They were invented in Britain in the 1800's, so they're wholly British. They're normally made from cotton as opposed to linen, and serve a myriad purposes. Anywhere from drying dishes to wrapping up a tea kettle to keep it warm and drip free. The later fact does not really ring true for Americans as we've not had much tea since December 16, 1773 when we decided to throw it all into a bay.

Tea towels can also be used to dry glasses, but apparently a glass towel is commonly employed for this. This hits home. The number of times I've tried to dry out wine glasses with a kitchen towel, ended up pushing water around on glass' surface, and eventually just getting a paper-towel is ridiculous. It's a post-party exercise in non-absorbency. I'm gonna look into glass towels...

So I reached out to Dunelm for some background on Penny, but to no avail. She's labeled as both Penny Sheep and Penny the Sheep. And in my opinion "Penny the Sheep" sounds better. I assume there is no relation to Shaun the Sheep, but I like to imagine they've seen each other about the farm and are friends.

Dunelm loves to put Penny on things. A search on their site comes up with quite a bit. The same design from the tea towels is on the oven mitt and seat pads, but she shows up with some friends on the Cake Tins. As Dunelm never got back to me, and I'm not disappointed or anything, I assume the other sheep's names are Frank and Maurice.

Perhaps the best Penny product was a "cuddle cushion." Which sadly seems to have been discontinued.

Well the first and easiest place to get your Penny Sheep Tea Towels is the Dunelm Website. They're £5, so a very minor investment gets you some cute towels. Just search for Penny Sheep and you'll come across all of the goods adorned by the sheep. If you're in the UK the Dunelm site has a tool to find stockists near you if you're so inclined to see tea towels in person before you purchase them.

Dunelm also does not seem to sell on Amazon. I'm not sure why, as again... they never got back to me. Additionally, it looks like they only ship within the UK. I tried to get their site to ship to my address, but to no avail.

If you're in the United States well then you're not getting any sheep.