This truly sucks

Right now, everything from the elbows on down aches.

This is good.

At least I can feel something. Hurting is better than losing all sensation in my hands, which is what is happening when I knit for much more than 10 minutes at a time. Kinda hard to get a decent stitch rythym going when you can't feel the needles. It's so freakin' frustrating.

But, I have taken the drastic step of joining a gym. I know (from many unfortunate years of experience with this stinking thing) that if I a) build up some muscle in my back, shoulders and arms, and b) lose a good amount of the excess weight I'm carting around, that some of this will resolve itself. That's the easy part. The hard part is that I really just need to put down the damned needles for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, right. Might as well try to take away a coke whore's little sniffing spoon. Sigh.

In other news, brace yourselves, ladies, the end of the world must be near - Frank decided to learn to knit. The astonishment I feel over this development is so extreme it has somewhat distracted me from the exasperation of my rotten hands.

For those of you who haven't met Frank, to the left is my favorite picture of him. I've been teaching him the basics, and he's doing great! Dug out a simple reversible cable scarf pattern I thought he'd like, gave him some very nice Lorna's Laces worsted weight (in manly camo colors), handed over my favorite pair of nice stout No. 10 straights, and set him to work.

I think he's almost - not completely, but almost - past the truly horrible initial part of learning to knit. Remember that part? The part where every single stitch is a miserable, tense struggle? Where absolutely everything feels awkward and stupid and wrong? The part where you make a gazillion mistakes and don't know how to find 'em, let alone fix 'em? He's only nine or ten rows into his scarf and already he's "getting it." If he keeps after it I think he's going to be a good knitter.

Actually, if he keeps after it, he'll probably wind up being better than me. This is one of the perils of marrying a brilliant man. I've never seen him do anything poorly.

We motored up to Arlington Saturday, where he ran in a 12-k race and came in third in his age group. Smart, multitalented, easy on the eyes, and now he knits. How I got this lucky is a great mystery.

We got a new digital camera a couple of days ago, which does not cast an annoying dark shadow over the subject matter every time the flash is used, so I should be able to more consistently post pics of my work in progress. My super secret goal for the day is to bag a photo of Frank knitting, so y'all know I'm not just making this all up. A close-up of the scarf in progress is also in the game plan.

The Bohus yoke needs a picture, too. It's so frickin' gorgeous. But, I have made such slow progress because of my stupid RSI that it might just be too depressing to post. Sigh.