Cooling Lei

It just barely, sorta, kinda looks like one. At least to me.

I have some of those Chilly Pad cooling towels that can be soaked, wrapped around the neck, and left to evaporate and draw out heat. There's no good way to wear them, since they don't have fasteners. I wanted to knit something from this material to wear when I have to be out in the heat.

I looked up what Chilly Pads are made of. It's a spongy material called polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA. It's also the material used in automotive drying towels. I could not find a yarn made from the stuff, so I made my own.

I got a 31" x 17" car towel. They are packaged wet, because when they dry, they are stiff and brittle.

I took scissors and made one long spiral strip about 1/4" wide by cutting up the right side, turning 90 degrees before reaching the end, cutting across the top, down the left, etc. I rounded the corners on each turn to keep the strip strong. In the end, I had 34 yards of what amounted to a super bulky ribbon yarn. Here is a picture showing a couple of remnants to illustrate the idea of making the spiral cut.

I looked for knitting patterns using Ravelry's excellent search tools and found a couple of interesting ones. I picked one and started knitting on my US 35 needles. I soon learned that this stuff sticks to the plastic needles something fierce. Since the material needed to be washed eventually, I just took hand soap and applied it to both the yarn and the needles whenever they started grabbing again.

In order to keep things slick, I was knitting over a bowl of water, dunking the work as needed. During the bind-off row, I broke the yarn by accident. Soaking in the water for a long time made the yarn pliable, but also weakened it. I ripped back a couple of rows and bound it off again. The end result really wasn't much different from the cooling towels sold in sporting goods and other stores. So I frogged it.

Next, I tried to arm knit it. The stitches were huge and loose, because, A: My arms are really big needles; and B: I couldn't tighten them much because the yarn loves to stick to itself even more than it loves sticking to needles.

So, I broke down and finger crocheted one long chain about 8 feet in length and tied the ends together. It feels pretty cool. I am losing some cooling ability by not having every inch of my skin in contact with the scarf, but it will stay on by itself. I don't know if having air circulating around and through the piece will hurt or enhance the cooling action.

The actual cooling towels and car drying towels are machine washable. I didn't want to put a slightly frail piece into the washer, so I just rinsed it by soaking and squishing it in the bathtub. There was already plenty of soap. I'll probably test it out in the heat this weekend.