How long can you wait?

They make them tough in Boston. Yes, you really can see people dressed in shorts as they walk through the snow on Boston Common. Perhaps it's Red Sox fever flowing through their veins...

However, even the hardiest New Englander starts to look concerned when autumn comes around. One minute it's warm and then the next – brrrrr! An icy wind suddenly comes straight down from Canada, creeping under every door and chilling the house to an uncomfortable degree.
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But it's only mid‐September! And you know your neighbours won't have their heating on for at least another month. So what do you do? Well I know what I would do, and that is to dig my hot water bottle out of its summer hibernation and make it a brand‐new cover!

Hot water bottles are great for adding an extra touch of heat just where you need it. Curl up with one as you watch TV, or put a small bottle on an aching back when you come in from gardening. Brilliant. Instant warmth and no need for the heating to be turned on just yet.

And of course, your evening will be much more pleasant if you know your PJ's are wrapped around a bottle ready for you to put on and snuggle under the duvet. Now all you need is cup of hot cocoa and an evening cookie and that north wind can howl all it likes.

So here's a hot water bottle cover in two different sizes: Joules & Joulietta. These are worked using a lovely soft, textural stitch called Barley Corn from our Reversible Knitting Stitches book. This traps the air well so is great at keeping the bottle warm for ages. Joules fits a regular‐sized hot water bottle and Joulietta is for a mini‐size – perfect when travelling or for a child's bed.

Both are quick to work so you won't have long to wait until you can have a cozy hot water bottle to hug! You also don't need a lot of yarn for each cover – about 60gm of worsted weight yarn for the mini size cover and 100gm for the larger one. I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes but any similar yarn would work fine. You might already have just what you need in your yarn stash!

And if you'd like to know where name came from, well all I can say is that it's fun being married to a scientist. Sharp as a tack and slightly random, you're never quite sure what they are going to say next. So when I asked my DH for a suggestion for a hot water bottle cover name, he immediately said "Joules"!  That made me chuckle and it seemed such a great name to choose.

Next time, I am going to post a quick step-by-step guide on how to correctly fill a hot water bottle. It may seem simple, but it's surprising how many people are not sure how you should do this, so see you back it here next time for a "how-to" guide!

Keep warm if you can!

Moira

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