21 April 2010

(Wo)Man Down

WARNING: This post contains medical content that may be disturbing for some viewers. If you are sensitive about blood and whatnot, it would be best that you turn away now.


I am a member of Ravelry, the online knitting and crocheting equivalent of Facebook. One of the features of the website is that you can join any number of groups, where you can discuss things with like minded knitters. I am a member of several, one of which is the 2010 Birthday Swap group. Once you join, you are matched up with someone who has a birthday near yours, then you buy each other small gifts and swap them. Since my birthday, and my partner's birthday are both on the same day next week, I've been picking out things to send her.

One of the required elements of the package is that you include something you make yourself. My buddy said that she would like to get some stitch markers, so I took a careful look at some of mine, and decided that I could probably make some for her.

I went out to Googly Eyes and Other Supplies (Daughter's name for Michaels) and picked up all the necessary bits and pieces that I needed. I sat down last night after dinner and started putting them together and got this far:

As you can see, I managed to put together some passable, if slightly large, stitch markers with the few tools I had at hand. The technique I used was to load up some beads on a headpin, run that through the stitch marker loop, twist the headpin, then snip it off to the correct length. I got all of the beads strung and the initial twists made when I discovered that my snippers were in the basement. I didn't feel like going to the basement, so I just grabbed my scissors and used them. This worked well for the first 2, but then came the third one and the medical incident.

Had I gone to the basement and gotten my snippers, I would have been able to trim off the little excess bits of wire from a nice safe distance. Using the scissors I had to hold things in a somewhat awkward position, which resulted in this:

On the left is the stitch marker, and on the right is a sizable piece of my left index finger. In fact if you click on the picture to make it bigger you can clearly see my fingerprints. 12 hours and 3 bandaids later it seems to have stopped bleeding, but it is causing a major knitting issue. I can make a knit stitch with very little pain because the yarn moves across the upper part of my index finger, but when I purl it seems that I use my index finger in just exactly the wrong place to move the yarn on the needles.

So unless someone can suggest a knit-only pattern that I'd enjoy, the knitting world will be one woman down until some healing occurs.

3 comments:

Hubby said...

Truly gruesome, but I think you should have included a photo of the bloody stump itself.

Carrie said...

Naasty! You know those stitch marker thingys look suspiciously like jewelry. Now if you only knew someone who makes jewelry, nearby that could have helped you there would be one more in the knitting world tonight. Have tools will travel to save my friend's fingers...

Five Ferns Fibreholic said...

I must say that this is the first time I've seen a pix of a piece of flesh on a blog.

That would have been a great post for your alphabet post. F is for flesh and finger.