Thursday 25 October 2012

Pin pricks and needle sticks

Any kind of manual labour – and by this I mean anything involving working with your hands, including the gentle labour of hand embroidery and home sewing – invokes the possibility of injury. But I’ve been taking the cake lately puncturing, piercing and perforating my fingers with pins and needles.

Is it just me or are these the most germ-ridden tools of our trade? Not content with mere holes, these prickly buggers seem to inject some sort of needle venom when they bite, causing the area to flare up in a disproportionately painful way – brand new needles included. I seem to have spent way too many nights of late sleeping with fingers doused in Germoline antiseptic ointment (my go-to solution for all manner of mildly painful things) and swaddled in plasters. And I have to treat the minor inflictions overnight because of course these little pains (in the arse) occur in the exact areas I need full dexterous use of if I want to continue stitching the following day.

Am I being too hasty, stitching when overtired, or distracted and not focusing on the task at hand? I suspect a combination of the above. But I also suspect I’m not alone in my needle nightmare. This surely has to be the ongoing scourge of the needlecrafts.

2 comments:

Paul & Carla said...

Could you be allergic to the metal in your needles? Or its coating? I get a little sore but not like what you're describing.

Kelly Fletcher said...

Good point! I could be... I'll look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.