In which I hurt myself

YSHA* will be here this afternoon to conduct its investigation. It's all very tragic (and painful), but I'll try to recount the events of yesterday so you can all learn from my mistakes.

Yesterday at 8 AM, I saw this on Ravelry, and realized that Nora's (store bought Princess) Valentines for the big kindergarten V-day party were woefully inadequate. They simply would not do. She'd be the laughing stock of her class. So I immediately set out to make hearts for her 14 classmates.

This would not have been a problem, except that my church's knitting group meets on Wednesday mornings. So I packed up my stuff and The Nige, and we went to the coffee shop for cookies and coffee and yarn. There, I worked on Nora's purple shawl for 2 hours. Kinda. When at a coffee shop with a 3-year-old, there's as much kid wrangling as there is knitting or crocheting. Maybe more.

So when we got home, I had to sit down and make 13 hearts (the first had been made at 8am, about 5 minutes after the first pattern sighting). I picked out some boyish yarns, some girlish yarns, and got to work. This is where the pain comes in. When working with teeny projects, it turns out that I hold the work very tightly with my left thumb and middle finger. So by 4 PM, my left thumb was atrophied and generally useless. My right wrist was tender, but not all that bad, considering the excessive crochet to which it had been subjected.

And then I got up to move a plastic file box full of art supplies. My right hand, in its weakened state, slipped off the top of the box, pulling my right fingernail back ever so slightly. You know how sometimes you hurt yourself and don't really know it until later? This is one of those times. As the night wore on, My hands began to wither and throb. My index finger is bruised, my knuckles are stiff, and my left thumb is still not working.

But look how cute they are. It was worth it, right?

Pattern: Crochet Valentine from Crochet Today
Hook: G/4.0 mm
Yarn: leftovers and vintage wool from the charity shop.

Note: In a lovely instance of serendipity, I already had a stack of crochet books checked out from the library, and now I can read them without feeling the urge to break out the yarn and sticks or hooks.











*Yarnitational Safety and Health Administration