I’ve never really considered knitting a high-risk hobby. Sure, my wrists are often sore and I even gave myself tendonitis from knitting too much. As a naturally paranoid person, I have considered the unlikely chance of getting stabbed by a needle while driving or during plane turbulence. But as I had never heard a verifiable story of such a stabbing happening to anyone, I brushed the notion aside as urban legend.

But then I started to read The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. (On my Kindle — the original version, not the new spiffy Kindle 2, but oh well.)

The VERY first story of suvival was about Ellin Klor, titled “A Knitting Needle Through the Heart” (click link for excerpt). I had to do a double-take. A knitting needle where exactly? The heart you say? Egads!

The very next day, I was knitting and watching TV, and I stumbled upon Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Health channel. After a story about a boy who had breathing problems, they played a piece about a woman who stepped on a crochet hook and impaled her own foot! Yikes! And the scary thing is this injury triggered a slew of other health problems (hence the mystery diagnosis) and kept her essentially bedridden for weeks.

If the universe is trying to warn me against knitting, I’m not listening. Though I’m now being a bit more careful about where I keep my needles when I’m not knitting, lest I sit down on them and pierce my behind.

Whether it’s the cosmos trying to put a damper on my knitting or just the result bad planning, I knit the ugliest bathmat in existence recently:

It was supposed to be Absorba (Ravelry), from Mason-Dixon Knitting, but since I don’t actually own that book, I decided to ad-lib the pattern. This was not a good idea. Once I realized the color scheme was all messed up, I gave up and just made the edge striped. The good news is that it’s comfy to stand on and it absorbs a lot of water, so it’s not a complete loss. Since I accidentally bought twice as much yarn as needed, I’m making a new bathmat in a different stitch pattern to atone for the ugliness of my existing one.

Final question for my readers: have you ever injured yourself while crafting? I’m curious to find out if it’s as dangerous as reported!