Cease and Desist

The four most physically painful experiences of my life so far are as follows:

  1. Being on the receiving end of a broken blade at a fencing meet during my sophomore year in college.
  2. Getting doored by a minivan while approaching the corner of Grove and Polk on my bicycle.
  3. My second-semester senior-year kidney stone.
  4. The last five miles of last year’s Nike Marathon.

The repetitive strain injury that I’ve received from knitting does not rank among these four events, but its impact on my life has been far greater than any of them. I had fully recovered from the fencing accident after a week; that minivan door left me with a sore shoulder and a pretty bruise, but not much else; I passed the kidney stone; and the marathon? I finished it, and that was that.

Last week I finally admitted to myself that the pain in my shoulder was not going away, and that switching to Continental has not helped (there’s no doubt that it’s easier on my shoulder than English——and I am now an official convert——but right now any knitting is too much knitting). The good news is that I’ve seen my doctor, I have an appointment with a physical therapist, and the prognosis is very good. In all likelyhood, I’ll be knitting (Continental) again in a couple of months.

For the bad news, let’s go to the pictures.

This is going to be a baby wrap. Since it’s all garter stitch, I figured it would be a good project to work on while learning Continental, and I was right. You can even see where my gauge finally evened out. Too bad I can’t finish it yet. Or at all. Estimated completion date: whenever the next baby shows up in my life.

The first half of a new pair of socks for my wife (Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch). All things considered, I’m not too sorry to have put this one down. It’s not a Cursed Project, but the resulting sock is sort of . . . um, weird, and all the yarn switching was starting to drive me insane. That heel flap did teach me how to knit English and Continental at the same time, which made me feel like a Jedi Master of Knitting. Estimated completion date: sometime before “‘Till death do us part.”

Sigh . . . I shouldn’t have even bought this yarn. What was I thinking? This is all for a sweater I’m designing, and since it’s for a major publication, that’s all I can say about it here. As such, it’s my top-priority project, and it’ll be the first thing to get on the needles once the results of my physical therapy are in evidence. Estimated completion date: as soon as f@%*ing possible.

In the meantime, I can finally take care of all of those non-knitting knitting projects, like doing the math on a pattern that I’m submitting for the fall issue of Knitty, mapping out the design for the above-mentioned sweater, cleaning out my knitting corner, and giving my wife unsolicited advice about all the things that she’s knitting. I’ll also finally get around to putting up the Danica Gallery (thanks to everyone who sent pictures! It’s still not too late to send me one!), setting up a free-patterns page, and doing a few nips and tucks to the entire site that I’ve been neglecting for a while.

And hey . . . if you feel like offering condolences about my shoulder, don’t hold back.

Magnets and Pins

A while ago, I was concerned about finishing Samus in time for my friend Suzanne, who was about to give birth. Many readers assured me that she wouldn’t return to pre-pregnancy size for a few weeks, so there was no need to rush. Good thing, because I didn’t actually finish it until last week.

Being a new mother (for the second time), Suzanne didn’t exactly notice the delay. And she was only vaguely aware of the bad zipper karma that I had to work through in order to get this sweater finished. I also made the mistake of leaving it folded over the back of my reading chair, thereby attracting the attention of my cat, who views all of my knitting as sleep fodder. She’d only been on it for a few hours when I discovered my lapse, but I still went through half a roll of packing tape getting all of that fur off. But what really got me to buckle down and finish this sweater was this:

That’s right, a magnetic pin cushion. Let me tell you about this magnetic pin cushion. When you spill your pins all over the floor, you can just wave that thing over them and they fly upwards like a movie in reverse. When you’re removing pins while you sew in that zipper, you can just throw the pins at the pin cushion, and thwap! You don’t even have to throw them at the pin cushion; you can throw them near the pin cushion, or even past the pin cushion. That pin will change direction in mid air. It’ll curve around and land on the pin pile with metallic ping that is so satisfying, you’ll sew faster just so you can take out the next pin as soon as possible.

I am so enamored of this thing that I actually pulled all of the pins off once, just so I could pick them up again with the magnet (thus earning a much-deserved hail of snickers from my wife). It reminds me of the pair of red circular magnets I had when I was a kid; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force them together. But if I turned one of them around, they’d smack together, and then I could barely get them apart. It’s an incredible phenomenon, and it’s the same one that drives the aurora borealis and directs compasses all around the world. Now it’s right here, at work in my living room, helping me finish my sweaters.

Okay, so I’m a big nerd. Whatever. Just look at the sweater, okay?

You Rule.

I used to think the phrase “online community” was an oxymoron, but the overwhelming response to my last post has made me change my mind. You’ve definitely broken a yarnboy.com record for the most comments in the shortest period of time.

Thank you all for all of your advice, tips, support, and general inspiration. My continental has already improved, thanks to all of your help, and I can tell it won’t be long before my shoulder will let me sleep with my arm underneath my pillow again. You rule the school.

And by the way, if you haven’t checked out the new and improved ask yarn boy, you should. It’s got a shiny new home with a new and more functional RSS feed, and it’s now searchable.

Help!

The switch to continental is underway, and it’s going . . . okay. My shoulder definitely appreciates it, and I’ve picked up the basic technique a lot faster than I thought I would. The hardest part is resisting the urge to just switch over to English. The second hardest part is something with which I could really use some help.

I have been experimenting with methods for holding the yarn. The first one I tried was simply wrapping it twice around my index finger; the second was wrapping it once around my pinky and then passing it over my index finger. Both of these work fine for a minute or so, but then (for reasons that I have yet to understand) the tension suddenly goes out of the yarn, my gauge goes to hell, and I can’t even pull the stitches snug.

I’ve tried two different modifications to the above techniques:

  1. Wrapping the yarn around my index finger three times
  2. Wrapping it around my pinky (once) and my index finger (once)

These methods all resulted in too much tension. The yarn wouldn’t run smoothly through my fingers, and I ended up with too little yarn between my finger and the needle to do so much as wrap a stitch.

So, continental knitters, how do you handle the working yarn? Any and all advice is more than welcome. I feel like I’m a beginner all over again, and while that’s a good spiritual exercise, it’s pretty much driving me bonkers. My English knitting is even, consistent, and fast; switching to Continental is like going into my house blindfolded after someone rearranged all of the furniture. Help!