Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Dear Crocheting, You're So Last Summer?

I normally get quite annoyed when the differences between knitting and crocheting are brought up. It probably has something to do with the reason knitting is so much more mainstream, and THAT got me thinking about other things I hate that are mainstream. While I do enjoy some mainstream pop/rock music, I prefer stuff that isn't heard on the radio. One of my favorite bands from college was Taking Back Sunday, and one day while listening to the radio on a run I heard one of their songs. I was taken back, how could THIS SONG be on the radio! What a bunch of sellouts! (same thing happened with NFG and the Plain White T's.) I got so annoyed that I changed my ringtone from Taking Back Sunday to something different, I didn't want to be like everyone else. Then a few months later that song and band were long forgotten and that song was their number 1 or 2 hit wonder on the radio waves. That's when I re-professed my love of all things Taking Back Sunday. So long story short, this gets me wondering, will I one day be upset when I get old and all my old-lady friends are crocheting? Will I embrace them and show them how it's done? Will I finally be able to accept that knitting really isn't a "bad cousin" to crocheting? Probably not, but hopefully many years from now I will remember that if I ever give up on the norm that is crocheting, that I'll come back to it when all my friends have arthritis in their hands or just forget to crochet, because they can't remember what they like to do, due to dementia!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Happy Hands

At our monthly meeting last night it was brough up that maybe we should incorporate some "warm up" exercises before we start crocheting. We're all aware that we're not getting younger, many of us have a future of arthritis to look forward to and it only makes sense to do some excercises to help strengthen the hand muscles we don't use while crocheting and stretch our hands out a bit from the repetitive motion. In my research on hand exercises I found two helpful sites for some crochet specific and arthritis exercises.

The first site is http://www.crochetsoiree.com this site is full of interesting crochet information. According to Crochet Soiree, crocheting can put you at risk for carpal tunnel syndrom due to the repetitive motion with your hands clentched. Crochet Soiree's solution to that is to stretch your hands and build up the muscles used for opening your hand. The full article and exercise instructions can be found here: http://www.crochetsoiree.com/tips-n-hints/view/5220-avoiding-carpal-tunnel-syndrome/

The second site I looked at is the world renownd Mayo Clinic for some athritis exercises.
This article can be found at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/arthritis/AR00030
I found this to be particularly helpful since it incorporates a series of pictures with the description of the hand excercises.