Knitted hot water bottle cover

I've always thought that I should be able to knit. You can make a lot of nice things with knitting, and it's suited to things that crochet really isn't by virtue of being stretchier and thinner. So I got a copy of Knitty Gritty by Aneeta Patel and proceeded to learn. Yes, you CAN learn out of a book, if you pick the right book.

I started on the Chunky Scarf, but my heart wasn't in it. I have a lot of scarves already, and I'm not too keen on the chunky style. So I decided to forge my own path and jump into making the Hot Water Bottle Cover instead. Like every other human on the planet, my motivation is vastly increased when I am interested in the outcome of my endeavours.

As a first project, I think it didn't go too badly. My tension was VERY tight for the first half of the first side, which means that both sides are not equally sized or quite the same shape. I can live with that, though, as an improvement is evident. Funnily enough, I read a knitting mystery recommended by someone in my book group (Knit One Kill Two by Maggie Sefton) and it was reading about the heroine's struggle to learn to knit that clued me in that my stitches shouldn't be so tight on the needles that I had to forcibly shove them along. This was one thing that Knitty Gritty neglected to mention. ;)

Where I did go wrong was with the sewing up. I have very good instructions for sewing up, but I was so pleased at finishing the knitting that I just dived in and wrecked the poor thing. My cack-handed attempt at blanket stitching isn't too noticable on the moss stitch section, but is dreadful on the stocking stitche edges, both the one where I did it on the inside and the one where I did it on the outside. Just dreadful. I think my next step is going to be trying to rip it out without destroying the knitted part and trying to crochet the edges together. I should practice proper sewing up, but another thing I only started halfway through the first side was a tip I got from a knitting magazine: always make your first and last stitch of any row a knit stitch to give you a nice bar for sewing up with.

As a friend pointed out, at least the hot water bottle fits inside it. That's a definite plus. ;) And I do like the buttons that D. (always a trooper when it comes to going into shops to buy things he doesn't know anything about) picked out for it. :)

Anyway, here it is. The lighting's not very good and when I've re-attached it to itself I'll try to take a better picture!