Posted on 8 Comments

Of rice pillows and surgeries

10 ricepillow 01

One of the secret Christmas crafts I made was a rice pillow. Well, actually three rice pillows. I followed Blair’s tutorial, which was terrific, but I made a few changes.

10 ricepillow 02

For one, I didn’t bother closing up the pillowcase. I didn’t have a problem with the end being open, and I couldn’t bring myself to fiddle around with snaps or velcro so close to Christmas (and with me teetering on the brink of sanity, and all). I’ve never done velcro before, and my success rate with snaps is about 50%. So, open ends it was. And I like them just fine.

The other change I made didn’t impact the finished product at all. It was more of a process improvement, really. I had made one of these pillows for my mother-in-law for her birthday in November, and while the sewing was simple, I struggled with keeping the rice that had already been put into the pillow away from the sewing machine needle when I closed up each pocket.

I was telling my own clever mother about this one December day, and together we brainstormed an idea for corralling the rice.

Two bamboo skewers (or knitting needles, or pencils, even) and two rubber bands attached to the pillow like so:

10 ricepillow 03

10 ricepillow 04

This gives you plenty of room to stitch the pocket closed while keeping the rice safely at bay. Are we smart, or what? Heh.

Do go try Blair’s project. These rice pillows are great for warming up cold feet (coughNeilcough), applying heat to a muscle ache, or applying cold to a wound. Keep one in the freezer, and if you need it hot, stick it in the microwave for a few minutes.


Friday is Defibrillator Day for Neil. I am glad he is getting this device, but I will be even gladder when the surgery is over and done with. Surgery gives me the jitters. Neil walked into the newly-sparkling kitchen last night and said, “I can tell you are nervous because the house is clean.” Such a comedian. He’s probably right, though.

I’ve got an unrelated post already written and scheduled for tomorrow, so there will be no news then, but I will let you know how it all goes sometime this weekend.  Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers!

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Posted on 8 Comments

8 thoughts on “Of rice pillows and surgeries

  1. Hugs and squeezes to the whole family!

    1. Thanks, Kat!

  2. Prayers for a quick easy procedure.

    1. Thank you, Marty.

  3. Wishing you guys the best & sending lots of good luck!

  4. Hope all goes well. I can only imagine how scary the whole thing must be for the whole family!! Praying all goes well.

    I’ve made these pillows before only with corn. I also made them with about 16 children as well for a school Christmas “gift” for the parents!! Needless to say all they did was put the corn in the bag 🙂

    LOVE new banner!! How did you do that??

  5. […] have a slight fever and a little headache. With a husband at home recovering from surgery [he can't drive yet, and he shouldn't be getting exposed to germs while he's still healing], and […]

  6. […] you know him from the broken wisdom tooth I probably never told you about in October, or the defibrillator surgery in January. Well, for those keeping track, we’d like to add “thwacked in the face with […]

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