very hip and berry hot water bottle covers



pattern from Rowan #28, knit in Rowan Kid Classic

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You wanna to make a hot water bottle cover? No problem!

I've had a lot of people ask me for a copy of the pattern for the hot water bottle cover that I made last year. I'm sorry to say that cannot share the pattern (from Rowan #28) because it is copyrighted. For those of you wishing to use that pattern, you can purchase the Rowan magazine or borrow it from a friend. There are also hot water bottle cozy patterns in the following books and magazines:
Rowan Junior
Interweave Knits Summer 2002
Debbie Bliss' Baby Style
Jo Sharp Four: Home
and Rachael from my glass house has written her own pattern. You can request a copy here.

But you know what folks, you don't need no stinkin' pattern. You can make one yourself. A hot water bottle cover like the one I made and the ones I've linked to is just like a little sweater. A sweater for a very small, skinny and armless person. You got sweater patterns already, right?? Well, pull out your favorite sweater pattern, ignore the sleeves and size it down to hot water bottle size. Presto change-o, your favorite sweater pattern is now a hot water bottle cover pattern!

Can't you just picture your hot water bottle in one of these Yankee Knitter sweaters? Or these basic sweater patterns from Ann Budd? Or this sweater from Rebecca Baby & Kids? Or this Jil Eaton MinnowKnits cardi?

Here, I'll help:

1. Lay the hot water bottle down on a table, nozzle up, like a little body just waiting for a sweater. Take its measurements: width, length and nozzle. You'll be using these measurements instead of your sweater pattern's measurements (chest, length to shoulders, and neck/collar).

2. Check your gauge.

3. Mulitply the number of stitches per inch from your gauge swatch by the width in inches of the water bottle across the bottom.

4. Cast on this number of stitches for the FRONT. If you want to be fancy, you could cast on six or eight fewer stitches and increase one stitch at each side for the first few rows to give the bottom edge of the cover a rounded shape. OR even easier, start with a half inch of 1x1 ribbing so that the sweater will cinch up around the bottom of the hot water bottle.

5. Knit straight until the cover (after any ribbing) is as long as the water bottle's "body". Does your favorite sweater pattern have a stitch pattern, a cable in the center or an intarsia motif? Go ahead and recreate that here on your hot water bottle cover!

6. Now mulitply your number of stitches per inch from your gauge swatch by the width of the hot water bottle's nozzle at it's widest part. The result is the number of stitches you need for the neck opening. (Just like a sweater, we've got to make sure that the head fits through the opening!)

7. Bind off "shoulder" stitches, leaving appropriate number of center stitches on a spare thread for the collar. Again, you might want to decrease one stitch at each end for a few rows to give the top edges a rounded shape.

8. Repeat steps 4 thru 7 for the BACK. Maybe you want to change stitch patterns for the back? Maybe you want to leave the cable or intarsia motif off of the back? Do what you like here. Be creative! If you're really feeling adventurous, knit the back in two pieces that will overlap, so that the cover can open up like a pillow sham. OR make your hot water bottle sweater into a hot water bottle cardigan! Quick, grab a cardigan pattern.

9. Sew up shoulder and side seams, joining the front and back. It's looking like a sweater now, isn't it?! Slide stitches for the neck from spare thread back onto needle. Knit the neck following your favorite pattern. I'd recommend a big turtleneck - very becoming to a hot water bottle.

10. If you leave the bottom open, you can slide the bottle in and out easily, so you can wash the cover. It is just like a little hot water bottle sweater! If you've made the neck large and stretchy enough so that the empty bottle will fit through (or if you knitted the back in two pieces), you can seam up the bottom.

That's it! You only had to do math twice and you used a pattern you've already got and like. Make them for everyone this holiday season!

Peter's joking mention of "soft girly porn" in his comment to Monday's parade of tank tops reminded me of something going on here at the blue blog that I like to call "the hottie phenomenon".

Remember my hotties from a few months ago? Well, I get a lot of hits related to them, most from people searching for hot water bottle cover patterns. The majority find me through Google, some from a Knitters Review thread about hip knitted hot water bottle cosies and a few from a post at der kleine Sockhaus back in January. I had no idea that so many people were interested in making these things!

The funny thing is that I also get hits from people just searching for hotties. I've even had several search for "texas hotties" (I posted that my great-aunts, for whom I made the hotties, live in Texas). Now, I'm pretty sure that hand knitted hot water bottle covers is not what these people were hoping to find from their Google search. Heh, heh. Well after this post, I'll be sure to be moving up on the Google results list!

Hotties are all done. I love the colors! They remind me of berries. They shoud be on their way to my great aunts next week. I hear that it's actually been pretty cold in Texas where they live, so maybe they can use them to stay a little warmer. You know, Texas heating can be a little like New England air conditioning: eleven months out of the year it's the most useless thing in the house, and in that twelfth month, it's just weak. Very berry hotties to the rescue!

I feel better now. The boys were very nice to me today, taking such a long nap that after forcing myself to get over my frustration, I was able to finish the neck on hottie #1. I've still got the final seaming and weaving in of ends to do, but then it's done! I also had time to block hottie #2. Making some progress on these has really revitalized me. Maybe I can make it these next three days until life gets back to normal here.

Since my in-laws are visiting, I haven't been able to knit very much at all and I am really missing it. Except for knitting up the main parts of the second hottie, I haven't touched the needles. I must be going through withdrawl or something, because I've been wicked cranky and uptight. Time for some knitting therapy!

So, tonight I decided to work on the hotties some more and if possible finish one of them. I got myself all psyched up by going out and buying the actual hot water bottles and then I found the perfect buttons. There's no stopping me now, I thought. Well, I picked up the first hottie to add the neck and after knitting the little turtleneck to the point where it's supposed to roll over, I realized that I'd begun with the wrong side, so the purl side would end up showing. [Insert favorite swear here]! I've ripped it out and am now feeling utterly frustrated, having wasted what promises to be my only knitting time for the week. Now I don't even feel like picking up the needles. [Repeat swear here]!

Well, I finally managed to get some knitting done and made progress on the hotties. What's really neat about the hottie pattern, besides the fact that it is oh so mega-hip, is that it's a great introduction to sweater knitting for beginners. You have to do all the same sort of shaping and seaming, add a collar, and you have to make sure that it will fit (although I expect that the hot water bottle is a fairly forgiving recipient). As it is essentially just a tiny sweater, I am in full finishing avoidance mode. I abandoned the blocked pieces of hottie #1, waiting to muster up the energy to sew them together, and knitted hottie #2 to the same point (bad picture, it's really purple!). It's still yet to be blocked. Oh, and I haven't picked out buttons yet. Okay, I also haven't gotten any hot watter bottles.

Hey, don't worry about finishing those sweaters out there folks, instead go check out the new Rebecca magazine. It's hot!

The other day, I mentioned some new projects on the horizon that have the greatest probability of interfering with my completing the UFO's of last year. Kathy asked about the hot water bottle cover and whether a wool cover wouldn't insulate the bottle too much. I wrote back that, when knit up, the Kid Classic yarn called for in the pattern is quite light and airy, blah, blah, blah.

Oops, busted! It's already on the needles. Yup, instead of starting the year off right, I ran out, bought the yarn and started on the hotties. I had planned just to scope out the yarn at the store and actually wanted to find a substitute yarn that was machine washable. But when I picked up other yarns knit at the same gauge, they did seem too dense for this project and the colors were nowhere near as pretty. Plus the Kid Classic has mohair in it, which makes the rather sterile hot water bottle seem so feminine and lovely. Anyway, I saw some colors I really liked, picked them up and simply couldn't stop myself after arriving home from "swatching a bit".  Here's what I've done so far.

And have you all read about how totally hip these water bottle covers are nowadays? Check out the NYTimes Style article from last weekend. Over $100 for a cover, water bottle not included!

New stuff that will most likely interfere with my plans to finish last year's UFO's:

• hotties: Dava, our Knitsmiths' founder made this hot water bottle cover from Rowan #28 and it was so amazingly beautiful that I decided I had to make it. I'll be knitting two (as always), but this time for my two great Aunts.
  
• greensleeves: I've been thinking about and planning this since I got the yarn at the Knitsmiths' yarn swap in November. Dava brought her new swift and ball winder to knitting group on Sunday and I wound all the skeins into balls. Now I'm really itching to start this project.
  
• brown butter: This vest for my husband, in Rowan's smooth as buttah wool/cotton, should be completed by his birthday (May), if I can just settle on a pattern!
  
• the blue sweater: Although this is the blue blog, I have yet to knit myself a blue sweater. I've seen a few fellow knitbloggers (Becky, Kim, and Clemence) work on sweaters in Giboulees, a fabulous bumpy yarn from Phildar, so I bought myself some for Christmas, in blue. I'm obsessing now about what exactly I want to do with it.