Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Injured List

I've suffered my first knitting injury. Well, it's the first one if I don't count all the times I've strained my right eye because of inadequate lighting. Yes, I do know better, but sometimes the urge to knit doesn't wait for good lighting, right?

Anyway a few nights ago I began a project from Son of Stitch n' Bitch. My husband saw a fair isle hat that he likes because it has skulls on it. He likes it despite the fact that the pattern calls for fingering weight yarn and size 1 dpns. But really, how is he to know any better? So there I was, cross-legged in the chair late at night, next to the not-very-bright lamp, straining downward to see the tiny stitches in two shades of blue. These two particular shades of blue are different enough to produce a nice contrasting fair isle pattern, but are not so easy to tell apart at midnight when illuminated only by my inadequate lamp. I got about 4 rows into the pattern repeat before calling it quits. I should have known that something was awry when my whole body was so stiff that I struggled and stumbled while getting up from the chair. I went to bed thinking about how much more fun I'm having knitting my other current WIP, a blanket with worsted weight yarn on size 8 needles.

The next morning when I woke up and turned my head to look at the clock, all hell broke loose. Actually, it was the opposite of loose. I had the worst neck crick of my life. Not just an uncomfortable one, but seriously horrific (at least at the time.) It hurt to sit up. It hurt to bend over. It hurt to look anywhere but straight ahead. It hurt even after two days of 800 mg of Ibuprofen, heat, cold compress, massage. People thought I was ignoring them when they were standing by my side, because I couldn't turn my head to look at them. Geeeez...all this caused by knitting a hat. More than one person has had a good chuckle upon hearing exactly how I threw my neck out. All this makes me realize that my body isn't as resilient as it used to be.

In other news, many good things happened over Christmas break. Most notably, we found out that Hubby would get out of the Navy earlier than expected. Actually, his separation date has already come and gone. After five years of service, he is a civilian again. The movers will pack up our things in California next week and we will move into our new Little Rock apartment next weekend. Exciting stuff!

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