things about my fingers

[ritaxis]

The dog in question has established a game for when I'm weeding. Which is an urgent task at this time of year as the oxalis wants to choke everything. When I weed I have to throw the weeds into the air for the dog to leap at and bring down. But every once in a while she gets too excited or something and lunges at the weeds before they've left my hand. And that hurts. And I'm hear to tell you that a puncture wound with bruise attached on the pad of your dominant hand pointer finger is really a drag (hi, James!).

Another thing about my fingers. Emma has sneakily sucked me into her sliding vortex of needlework craving. I found a crochet hook with a fat handle that doesn't hurt my hand, though the other hand gets tired easily from guiding the yarn. I've been using coarse, smooth cotton, about the thickness of sport wool. But all I'm doing right now is practicing and tearing it out, because I'm having trouble getting the stitches to be even. I have two ambitions. One is to make socks and the other is to make an Irish crochet window thing with a sine curve (naturally, though I can't really swear that the function that describes the curve really will be a sine)and acorns and oak leaves. I have to do a lot of inventing for the second, and maybe for the first, since I've not been happy with the patterns I could find so far (they all seem to ask for worsted weight yarn, and I've been down that road before, I don't need to go there again).

And I've been trucking along with the Sims graphics. And I wrote a little. Less than two hundred words, but I'm going to write more before I go to bed. Anyway, this bit -- it's called a "chapter" but there are only three of these things planned for the book -- is 11150 words long now, so it's adding up. The whole book has over 18K words so far.

The process -- since this book is one that I already wrote once, but I don't have it to work from, the process is very much like a first draft for me. I know what happens, and I know a lot of the specific words, but I really am writing, not channeling. Some excellent things I fear are lost forever. Other things are probably better this time around. Sometimes I do try to remember exactly what I did before, but mostly I just write. I wish I did remember some things, because there are problems I solved before that I have to solve all over again.

But. I back up offsite every single day. THat particular thing will not happen to me again.

Comments

[ellarien]

When you say Irish crochet, are you thinking of the leaf-and-flower on mesh style, usually done in very fine thread, or something like filet, double-crochet squares worked out on graph paper?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The leaf and flower stuff. But I'm looking to adapt it to the coarser thread and larger hook that my messed up hands can handle. Which is why I'm practicing: coarser crochet has a hard time looking really good, so it can't afford to be uneven or sloppy.

Filet crochet, I think, can't make any sense at all in a coarser grain. I think it looks like gibberish when it's made large. Is your picture something you made?

[ellarien]

Yes, it's a little doily of my own design.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It's very beautiful and elegant. I can see you don't have stupid hands.

Re: things about my fingers

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i've got hand problems too. cotton is actually harder on them than wool and many other yarns, because it's less elastic. you might want to try the sock project either with a non-cotton, or with a cotton that has some elastic added (elann.com has "sock it to me" which is lovely for my hands). elasticity also makes the stitches come out more even, *grin*.

Re: things about my fingers

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I was thinking coarse cotton rather than wool because it has less friction and I would have to use less positive force to move it. And because I can feel it better in my hand, because it doesn't have such diffuse edges. But I should try the elasticity factor, and see what works.

My biggest problem is in the guiding hand. The hooking hand I can deal with, partly with the fat hook, but also with conscious effort to keep the hand loose.

When I (rarely) sew on the machine, the hand holding the cloth aches: when I sew (rarely) by hand, again, it's the hand holding the cloth.