Neck Thingie

I have a love­ly neck what­sis that I warm in the microwave. It has nice-smelling herbs in it and it feels won­der­ful. Every­body should have one. Maybe two. I’m seri­ous. It has laven­der and some­thing else I can’t quite iden­ti­fy in it. 

The cov­er can be removed to wash it. It’s very nice and soft, too, so that it feels good against even very sen­si­tive skin. Not like tow­el fab­ric, but some­thing, hmm, close to felt but not? Blanket‑y? It’s plain white, which is going to show any soil­ing very eas­i­ly. We saw some oth­er heat­able pret­ties at a kiosk in the mall recent­ly that were cov­ered in a vari­ety of gor­geous fab­rics that would­n’t show soil­ing as eas­i­ly. They weren’t as soft as this, though, and I don’t believe they were washable.

Now I want the same for my low­er back, but I think I’ll need to actu­al­ly design and make it so as to be sure it’ll fit my girth. It would feel good for peo­ple with low back pain and those who get those nasty cramps.

I’m think­ing that get­ting a pret­ty big piece of fab­ric and sep­a­rat­ing it into pock­ets filled with rice and herbs will work bet­ter than one large sec­tion. That’ll keep the rice from clump­ing at one end or the oth­er, at least (that’s my only com­plaint about the one I have). In fact, to make sure that it does­n’t all fall to the bot­tom, the thing may need to be divid­ed into pock­ets both ways. Quilt­ed, almost. Does that make any sense? Now I want a sewing machine so I can try it. It should­n’t cost much at all for mate­ri­als, but I don’t want to hand-sew that much.

The remov­able cov­er part—hmm, I think it would work bet­ter with a zip­per, like my neck thingy, than with vel­cro. Zip­pers and but­tons are way beyond my skill lev­el. I think I may have to throw myself on the mer­cy of those who can tru­ly sew.

The “scent packs” for the neck thing are remov­able. I sup­pose that would allow you to change to oth­er herbs if you pre­fer them (or are aller­gic to some, like waya is). When I did a neck thing before for myself, I just mixed the herbs in with the rice. You could, of course, leave it unscent­ed, which would take care of any pos­si­ble aller­gy issues.

Would it be bet­ter to make up small muslin bags of rice, then sew them into pock­ets in the oth­er fab­ric? That would prob­a­bly make the sewing eas­i­er, although it adds a step.