The four most physically painful experiences of my life so far are as follows:
- Being on the receiving end of a broken blade at a fencing meet during my sophomore year in college.
- Getting doored by a minivan while approaching the corner of Grove and Polk on my bicycle.
- My second-semester senior-year kidney stone.
- 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.