the ol' knitting injury

i hurt myself knitting last night. don't laugh.

i have always wanted to learn how to knit - so much so that i bought a "beginners learn to knit kit" and tried to teach myself through the kit's instructional book, tiny pictures and all.

as luck would have it, my mom also wanted to learn how to knit but she was smart enough (and not as cheap as me) to sign up for knitting lessons. she went to her first class last week and e-mailed me the next day, asking me if i wanted to take over for her. her reasons for quitting were that: a) it was boring; and b) she got so tense making sure that she was using the proper technique that her shoulders tensed up and she needed a massage. i laughed at her.

i went to her second knitting class last night - loved it! by the end, i felt like a pro. this morning, i felt like i had whiplash. so much for laughing at my mom's "knitting injuries" - i had my own!

turns out that knitting involves a lot of looking down and thus, bending your neck. i have a bad neck (along with the traps and shoulders) from various car accidents (none were my fault!) and RSIs from working with computers and mice (mouses, if you will) all the time. i know better than to strain my right shoulder with an ill-placed mouse or my neck with a monitor that is set too low or too high. yet it really didn't occur to me that knitting might aggravate any of my pre-existing injuries (is that thin-skull or crumbling-skull? i could never figure out which was which). so, i didn't do any of my post-strain exercises or stretches (why would i? i was KNITTING for crying out loud!) and now, i suffer. i couldn't even get a massage appointment for tonight so i settled for one on thursday. my neck should be sufficiently worse by then, i think.

still, the urge to knit is overpowering....