A Heart-Warming (Pulse-Warming) Story

Guest article by Ellen Sandin, Earth Faire

Originally published in issue #81 of Knitterly News

I wanted to share the following story with you -- I sent the basic story to my newsletter subscribers because I am so pleased and your pattern was such a major hit -- well, read on ...

My mother-in-law lives with us, at the amazing age of 95 and is in excellent shape both mentally and physically (knock on wood) except that her hands are very arthritic and always icy cold. So it was a couple of days before Christmas, and I had actually caught up on all the have-to-do's and was settling down to some would-like-to-do's. And it occurred to me that she might enjoy a pair of pulse warmers -- she is from Sweden and loves anything I can tell her is Scandinavian in origin anyway. So I sat down with some left-over fingering weight yarn, some 8/0 beads and your pattern for the Fleuron wrist warmers. I chose those as my mother-in-law is very tiny (less than 5 ft tall and maybe 95 lbs soaking wet) and these were the smallest design I had easily on hand and look lovely in their simplicity. And it took me only a few hours per pulse warmer and then both were done. When she opened up the package, she immediately put them on. By the end of the evening, her hands, normally really freezing to the touch, had warmed up to a higher temperature than mine. She was thrilled and so much more comfortable! I sat down the next day and made her another pair so she could have one to wear and one to wash and she has been wearing them ever since.

Then, a few days later, we were going to visit some friends who live in a big old draughty house -- they warned us to dress warmly for the visit -- and decided to make a pair for the wife. Lo and behold -- she sent me a note the other day thanking me profusely and saying that wearing them makes a tremendous difference to her comfort.

I knew that theoretically pulse warmers should help keep the body warmer in the cold winds of winter, but hadn't had any practical empirical evidence of it myself. And for those of us who have to shiver through winter or who have loved ones in the cold, I thought this was worth knowing. And it occurs to me as well that for the menfolk one could simply leave off the beads (or maybe not) and you have something that can be worn anywhere, over or under cuffs and really make a difference.

So I wanted to say thank you -- and yes, the sharing of this story is also the reason I need to restock on your wrist warmer patterns ... :-)

Ellen Sandin
Earth Faire
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Check out the patterns for Wrist Warmers.

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