It's here! It's here! And dammit, I can't knit!

The new Fall knitty is here! The new Fall knitty is here! And chock full of so much yummy goodness. Oh, that Suss sweater. Oh, those Diamante socks. Oh, the intrigue of knitting two at once.

And wouldn't ya know, I can't do a damn thing about it. Well, not right now anyway. See, I've been doing more frogging than I think is normal for me the last couple of weeks, even still somewhat fresh off the supernewbie boat. And yesterday afternoon, having had to frog back that *&#%ing MJ hat yet again, I realized why.

My right arm from elbow to fingers, is killing me. Hubster, who was called upon to be my massage bitch, was kneading my forearm, asked me what I did to myself, and upon hearing the words, "knitting injury," laughed his ass off.

But, in all seriousness, I a) have been knitting virtually nonstop since the inaugural stitch back in May, b) fully admit I am a tight knitter, c) have a tendency to attach a death grip to dpns like they're my boss' neck during a raging pms attack, particularly on that first stitch to help avoid the dreaded ladder effect, d) just finished a pair of fingerless gloves on fingering weight yarn on size 4 dpns, and e) followed that up by starting a pair of magic cast on toe-up socks on size 2 dpns.

All of these have culminated in some borderline ocd cracking of my wrist and fingers of my right hand, with a muscular ache chaser running down the forearm, through that delicate webbing on the top of the hand, and deep into my knuckles. (I pitch my tent in the Continental camp.)

I have naturally been blocking all of this out because, well, I just love to knit. Plain and simple. I love it. I love it like an obsessive Lifetime television movie c-list actor loves the former 90210 star he's stalking (or vice versa). I can't remember what the hell I did with my time BK (before knitting, although the giant stack of unread books and Instyles on my end table provide some clue). So even amidst the underlying pain, I still felt this primal urge to pick up the sticks and forge ahead. Yesterday afternoon, I realized I couldn't hide my head in the sand any more and that for the greater good, I had to take a break.

So it is with gut-wrenching dismay that I am enforcing a self-imposed knitting moratorium for the remainder of the week. During this time I will try to:

• Massage, nurse, beg, and plead my arm back to health
• Remember what it's like to go to bed before midnight (which will be a nice change of pace, considering I get up at 5 am)
• Remember that I like wine
• Remember that I like to cook
• Watch some of those 9 episodes of "Lost" sitting in my Tivo
• Watch some of those 13 episodes of "The Closer" in my Tivo
• Reduce the four-month backlog of magazines sitting on my end table

I honestly don't think this is a case of rsi, as I don't have any of the other symptoms and it really hasn't been long enough for something that serious to have developed. I think this is simply a case of formerly unused muscles being suddenly overworked and revolting in protest. So with some rest, heat, and ice therapy, I'm hoping it will make a full recovery by the end of the week.

This is actually a good thing (shut up, the denial is keeping me sane), as now I will have plenty of time to pore voraciously over the new knitty, update my wip/stash spreadsheet, and map out my knitting projects for the remainder of the year (some a changes comin' on that sidebar)!

You'd think not knitting for a week would be less melodramatic. But if you are a knitter, you know how long and tortorous that can be - not when you don't knit, but when you can't.