Tea and Cakes

Those people in the TSA who say that knitting needles are banned from flights because they’re dangerous are right. Those things can hurt.

It’s a weekday evening. I’m home from work. I’ve made and eaten dinner. The tea brack (fruit cake thing) I’m making is in the oven. It’s time for a cup of tea and some sock knitting. I’ve been looking forward to finishing the sock all day. It’s in the other room. I pick up everything I need. The paper with the instructions on, the ball of yarn, the half done sock with the three double pointed needles holding stitches, the spare needle. Ahhh, the spare needle. The 20cm long, 3.25mm wide, double pointed spare needle.

As I’m walking into the living room I drop the spare needle. As I do this I put my right foot down to take the next step. Guessed what happened yet?

Yep. I don’t have lightening fast reactions. It didn’t bounce off. The needle is sticking out of the bottom of my foot. My foot is in the air, and the needle is there, sticking out of it. Securely held. Not falling out. In my foot.

I drop the rest of the stuff I’m carrying.

“Are you ok love?” Donal shouts from the other room.

“Erm. No.” I reply. I hear Donal leap to his feet and run out to me. My usual response to “Are you ok?” is “Yes”, whether I am or not.
Now. The other thing you need to know at this point is that Donal’s back is playing up. It hurts to walk, and he’s limping. Leaping to his feet and running out to me hurt. A lot.

I’m stood in the hallway, right foot in the air, knitting needle hanging out of it, not moving.

“Oh fuck” he says. “Let me carry you to the bed”.

Yeah, cause someone who can barely walk himself can carry me to the bed. We settle for him helping me sit on the floor.

“We need to get that out”
No shit.

“It hurts”, is all I’m capable of saying. I’m swinging through pain and nausea, but trying to work out what to do. I manage to get the sock off. The needle’s wedged into the bottom of my heel at an angle. It barely moved when I took the sock off. Incidentally, if you’re going to jam a knitting needle into your foot, I recommend doing it the way I did. There doesn’t seem to be any blood. Donal later pointed out that my feet are always freezing, so there’s probably not any blood in them anyway.

Anyway. We’ve decided that we need to get it out of my foot. Now begins the search for any sort of first aid stuff. I know that somewhere I have a little bag with some plasters, cotton wool and antiseptic wipes that I take with me when we’re going up to the mountains. No idea where I’ve put it though. Donal reckons that we need antiseptic. I’m in too much pain to think straight, although it does occur to me that maybe we should get a photo of this.

So, I’m sitting on the floor in the bedroom doorway, on a towel, pressing some loo roll over the bit where the needle goes in. Donal is hopping around the room, frantically trying to find any sort of antiseptic. “Why don’t we have any dettol?” He asks me. Then limps around, as fast as he can, searching the wardrobe, my bedside cabinet, anywhere I think I might have left what we do have. We find cotton wool, and plasters, and some out of date immodium from our first holiday together (Morocco). I give the needle a bit of a tug. It doesn’t budge, but the pain hits me again and I feel like throwing up.

Donal jumps around the room some more, looking for things that might make this not have happened. I sit curled up, the enormity of it hitting me again every now and then, mixed in with sheer amusement at the situation.

“Can you pull it out?” I ask.
I press down on the bit where it goes in, and Donal pulls. It comes out.
“ow ow ow ow ow” Boy, does it hurt.

The doorbell rings. It’s the guy to pick up the census form. Great timing. Donal takes it out to him. I can hear them in the hallway, and I’m hoping, really, really hoping, that they don’t take one step forward. I really don’t want some random person seeing me crunched up on the floor, on a towel, surrounded by plasters and cotton wool, clinging on to my bare right foot.

It’s all ok. Donal limps back inside. He helps me up. The plan is to get to the bathroom so I can wash the foot. I can’t put the foot down. Donal can barely walk himself, but is trying very hard to pretend that he can. It takes us a while. At this point I’m pissing myself laughing. I’m in pain but the whole thing is so funny.

We discover some sort of ungent that we got in Finland from a non-english speaking pharmacy – neither of us is quite sure what it is, but it seems to contain iodine, it smells of antiseptic and it’s done us well in the past. I put it on, add a plaster, and here I am. I can walk on the ball of my foot, but I can’t put the heel down, and it still hurts like hell. Getting to work tomorrow’s going to be fun. Explaining exactly what I did to the people I’m being trained with tomorrow day, and the 15 people I’m giving training to tomorrow evening is going to be interesting.

Oh, and I am definitely teaching myself to knit socks on a circular needle.

*Update: You can read Donal’s version of events here.