Hottie Covers

One of my favorite discoveries in Walgreens has to be the hot water bottle (and the cold water bottle as a close second). I have weak abs, and when I run this tends to manifest itself in some mild back pain. I think this is when I first discovered the hot water bottle. They are not very attractive, being made out of some kind of rubbery plastic, but they certainly get the job done.

Once I was no longer nursing an injury, I took a great deal of pleasure filling up this little guy ever night to put in the blankets at the foot of my bed. The beauty of the hot water bottle compared to an electric blanket is that the water eventually cools off. I have found myself in this last week or so really enjoying finding the cold bottle with my toes as morning grew closer. 

The problem with the hot water bottle is not so much the looks (have any of you seen my hot water bottle?) but that rubber plastic. It never feels nice on my toes...or my back....or snuggled in my arms on its trip from the bathroom to my bed. It is after all just a bit of plastic. 

Luckily, I'm a knitter! Even more luckily for my knitter-self, I have two water bottles. That means I can make two covers. So with this knowledge at hand, I explored Ravelry for some inspiration and came up with two very different covers. The first I will likely knit from the pattern, because the cables, bobbles, and traveling stitches along with the long ribbing at the top of the cover just screams winter comfort to me. The second pattern is no longer available, so I plan to play around with some yarn and stitch patterns to see what I can come up with. The general idea of the second cover is to use a cabled lace pattern, I think this would work nicely when I want a little more intense of a heat and also when I'd like to use the bottle cold. 

So with some general yardage in mind, I headed down the hill to my favorite yarn store, Pearl Fiber Arts. Now Portland has a ton of different yarn stores, and each one has a slightly different piece of the fiber pie as part of their stock. What I love about what Cindy stocks is it is kind of like an etsy shop, but I get to touch everything and hold colors up to one another. Plus, all of those pretty hand dyed yarns are local. Plus, I always go in knowing what I am looking for, but its so much fun to be able to get help from Cindy. Even though I go in by myself, it feels like shopping with a friend. Okay, I promise she didn't pay me to say any of this. I do save up my projects in my head that need a special yarn for trips to Pearl Fiber Arts. 

Back to the hot water bottle covers.

I came home with a lovely worsted weight hand-dyed green yarn, called Kale, for my cabled cover. This is the one I will be making from a pattern (though I am a tad worried about the hand-dyed color way obscuring the cabling).

I also came home with (and then frantically checked that I had bought enough) of a beautiful gray fingering weight yarn (called Rainstorm) that I hope to play with and make into a lovely cover. I am also realizing how much these two yarns remind me of winter in Portland. 

Of course I left with a few other things, including an order placed for yarn to participate in the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery Knit Along, a blue green and purple skein of sock yarn with silver sparkles, and a small Lo Lo Barn in the Winter Bliss scent.