Crocheting and Knitting Hand TIPS

Customer are often asking me how I can work so much with my hands and not complain about the pain. It's simple - I don't get pains. Like with any labor job if you want to continue doing a good job you need to take better care of yourself. Otherwise the younger folks will sweep away with your job. And so I exercise my hands and fingers not just before I start a project but many times a day. I watch my husband struggle with RA www.ra.com and I really do have to respect him because it's hard to do any form of crafting with his condition - trust me he's in pain 24 hours a day.
 I think that's why I push his items more then my items in our stores because he works with pain and I feel it's worth the sales. The shots to help him deal with the pain is over $1500-2500 depending on the brand per shot (shot last for 3-4 months before a new shot would have to be given) without insurance in which he is one of millions that do not carry it. Don't worry he'll have some with in the next month thanks to Medicare because of his disease.
 I do have insurance because I am a diabetic type 1 and require to be on insulin (lucky me 2 types of insulin I am on) up to 3 times a day on a bad day but only twice a day on all other days. This is over $400 a month in expenses even with the crappy insurance program. So as you can imagine our stores mean a lot to us...
So taking care of our hands are most important to us because our depended income. I will go over the exercises that we do first and then talk about the cream we use and how you can buy your own.

MASSAGE HANDS, WRIST AND FINGERS
I always do this first and dry (do not add lotion). I will use my thumb and do mini circles around the entire wrist. And then grip the wrist and rub. And then I will do the same thing over the entire hand and then work my fingers with a slight pull (not too hard) and take each finger bending and moving them in circular motion. I work each hand for a least 5-10 minutes per hand.

MAKING FIST MOTIONS
I will do this for about 10-20 seconds. make a tight fist. Make a fist and hold position for 10-20 seconds. And then release the pose and relax your hand for about 5-10 seconds. Repeat to 5-10 times (I do it 15 times)

CIRCLES
Take your hands and make circles going the same direction for about 10-20 second and then switch directions. Do about 5-10 of these. This helps loosen up your wrist.

WAVE
Now you know how to wave of course but instead of waving side to side. Flap your hands from back to forward (like your going to slap me lol).

MASSAGE
One last time very quickly. This time it should feel a little differently.

LOTION ABOUT 20 MINUTES BEFORE YOU START YOUR PROJECT FOR THE DAY
It will take about 20 minute to have fully dry hands... And if you work with yarns you know how important it is to have dry hands when working on a project. Some yarns are very scratchy and having moisture of any kind enhances it big time

I use BLUE-EMU (my husband winter boss got us hooked on it this winter).. Like I said this works for me but doesn't do a thing for Jorge. http://www.blue-emu.com/ will explain how it works and all the information to why you should use it including info on it's omega rich oil. I am telling you how it feels - I love it... My hands feel free and loose and I wish I could slop it on my whole body but at $17.99 a container is just too expensive for me.  You can pick this up from any www.walmart.com in the country. The best part is that the cream is ODOR FREE

When I crochet or knit I have been know to put in 8 plus hours into any given project - so maintaining good hands is very vital... And it's never too late to start!!

ETSY FEATURE OF THE DAY:

Emu Oil Bar Soap  by SoapFun

$4.25 and 64 awesome items for sale

http://www.etsy.com/shop/soapfun

Shop Announcement

Welcome to Soapfun. We make quality Bath and Body Products. Each product is handcrafted and hand wrapped. Top of the line ingredients are incorporated into each item we sell. Feel free to browse our shop. We are sure you will find what you are looking for. Don't see what you want, we can probably make it for you.

Any of our products can be ordered unscented. Want a custom label? We can do that too. Send an email and let us know your wishes.

We ship to the USA and Canada at this time.
A free sample will be shipped with each order

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Do you workout before crafting?

And How?

Your comment help newbies...

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