A question of thumbs

So, I accept that the problem with my thumbs is almost certainly the crocheting. It is certainly the thing that changed abruptly and recently. And I have, some days, crocheted as much as four hours or so. But if that is the case, why does the pain and clicking decrease during my wake time? Why does it hurt worst during sleep and just after waking up? And why does crocheting actually feel good while I'm doing it? If, in fact, I'm damaging some damn thing or another, why does doing this thing not hurt?

Any gate, see the doctor on Monday.

Joys and sorrows, crochet edition

There's really nothing quite like the exactly right tool. Which is probably why I own every size crochet hook there is, up to about a J hook. I don't like hooks larger than that, so I don't own them. Last week, I went to Michael's to get a yarn needle, which I needed to assemble Carol's afghan. While there, I came across stitch markers which work for crochet. Ah, so happy, now. The knit stitch markers I have are solid circles that one slips on the needle at the appropriate place. These do not work at all for crochet. For crochet, I've been getting by with little bits of yarn tied in strategic places. These are annoying to put on, annoying to take off, and sometime come unknotted and fall off at inopportune times. The stitch markers are flexible plastic rings. One end of the circle has a little peg, and the other end had a little hole that the peg fits into. You pull the circle apart, put it around your stitch, and then put the peg in the hole, and it's a solid circle again, and doesn't fall off.

While I was still working on Carol's afghan, I came across a variegated yarn (they call them ombres, these days), a Caron Simply Soft that was too pretty to pass up, so I bought a whole bunch of it. I was planning on making Naomi's afghan next, but these colors are exactly Pamela's colors. It's called Spring Brook, and it's greens and blues and purples, all colors she wears and has in her bedroom. So, I ended up starting Pamela's afghan, instead. (Co-wife, room mate, yeah, 'fraid she does get precedence, you know?)

Now, I'm not real smart about patterns. I basically slavishly follow the directions, with faith that eventually it will all make sense. Usually, it does. I can't really read a pattern and understand it. Instead, I follow the instructions step by pain-staking step until it turns out that it is what it is supposed to be. After a certain amount of repetition, I understand why and how it works, the understanding starts with the fingers, not the brain. Crochet is, for me, a tactile and kinesthetic endeavor, not a creative or intellectual one.

The pattern book I've been working from is really not very good. The instructions are a bit marginal, and sometimes assume things or leave things out. The afghan I'm currently working on is done in motifs, and then the motifs are sewn together. Now, intellectually, it's pretty simple. Each motif is a hexagon, and hexagons fit together in pretty obvious and predictable ways. Except, that wasn't how I understood it. The instructions call for whip-stitching the motifs together (think sewing), and the part about where you start and end didn't exactly make sense to me, but I followed the instructions as best I understood them and stitched together about 30 motifs. Then I looked at some examples of the finished afghan, and noted that my results were, um, variant. Also, I'd been having trouble getting the motifs to fit together, and really, they should do it very easily and naturally. So, tonight at work, I sat down with some paper and a pen and sketched some basic charts, trying to understand what wasn't working. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I'd been making a persistent error, and that I needed to unsew everything. Oh boy.

I've been very good about weaving in my ends as I go along, because I hate it so very much. Which of course meant that it was very hard to find the whip-stitch to cut it, so that I could undo the motifs. I only damaged four motifs in the process, and I was able to repair all of them. So, not too much damage done, but it was annoying, and a lot of work. Now, I get to sew all of them back together. Oh, joy. And, of course, make the rest of the motifs. I'm about a third of the way through with that, too.