A Long Hiatus

Knitting myself a new felted purse.  Can you tell I have a navy blue crush?

Hello.  I am back from a long unexpected hiatus.  You see sometime back in February during the cold Minnesota winter I injured myself while shoveling snow.  At least I believe that's what started the bout of tendonitis I am currently experiencing in my forearms.  I was shoveling our driveway when my arms shouted "enough already!".  Figuring I probably overexerted myself I stopped shoveling,  but I didn't give much thought to my arms other then noting they would probably take a few days to recover.

Well, my arms didn't get any better.  I managed to deny anything was really wrong for weeks until both my arms got worse to the point where they hurt badly while I was knitting.  Again, still thinking this was simply a case of overuse I took a week off from knitting anything at all.  Doesn't sound hard right?  Well frankly, I was in tears by the end of the week and my arms still hurt.  All the advice I got both professional, internet and friendly was to not use my arms to give them time to heal.  And I tried again not knitting or doing anything non essential with the result being more tears and still aching arms.  

Since I have pretty serious depression I go to counseling regularly as part of my management program.  As this not knitting regime was affecting my mood so significantly it came up during session. I not only found out my counselor also has tendonitis in her forearms, but she has an active way of managing it with massage therapy.  She promptly gave me the name of her massage therapist who I rapidly made an appointment to go see.  

My visit was very beneficial.  The therapist agreed it was a pretty classic case of tendonitis and proceeded to give my arms a massage.  This was not a pleasant relaxing massage.  On the contrary, it was rather a painful experience.  But after a few days of feeling very sore I started feeling notably better to the point where I could knit again.  Not for very long at first, but with each subsequent visit to the masseuse my knitting is feeling better and better.  It has been such a relief I tell you.  I was starting to wonder there what the heck I was going to do with my time if I didn't knit.

I'm not back up to my regular knitting speed/endurance yet, but at least now I can feel the improvement happening.  Which has me back to doing some planning (Stash Dash anyone?) and now blogging as well.  I'll catch you all up on everything next post.  

Have a great week everyone!