Sunday, November 23

Susan Bates, why have you forsaken me?

A lot of people are allergic to wool, and a very unlucky few are even allergic to alpaca. Me, I haven't got any fiber allergies that I know of... but I do have a bitchin' metal allergy.

It's strange, because I wasn't always allergic to certain metals. As a kid I bought and wore just as much cheap, mystery-metal plated jewelry as the next little girl. But as I got older my reaction to jewelry got stronger. First it was an aversion to earrings-- a life-long avoidance I only recently realized was due to discomfort. This mild pain shifted more recently into a fierce reaction: big, red, swollen, infected earlobes. Gross.

About a year after realizing that I could only wear gold in my ears (only solid gold, how convenient...) I developed a strange rash on my chest. After a few weeks of, "Gee, what could this possibly be?" a fateful moment in the mirror revealed the cause of my small rash. Leaning forward, open-mouthedly applying mascara in my bathroom mirror, my eye caught the little harp pendant around my neck. The charm hung exactly where the rash was, and when I turned the charm over I saw little glimpses of silvery metal peeking through the gold plating. I decommissioned the charm and within days my rash was gone.

Even though I'd known for years about the earring thing, the necklace bit caught me off guard. I was amazed that I was that sensitive to metals. It was an "Aha!" moment, much like the moment I had today on BART. While knitting the last few rows of the Springtime in Philadelphia beret I began to feel soreness in my thumbs and index fingers. I glanced down and saw that, by pushing the stitches up off my needles (I knit English), I was rubbing my fingers over and over against my needles.

I got rid of all Addi Turbos long ago, understanding that the nickel content was to blame for my unpleasant knitting experience with said needles. After getting my set of Harmony wood needles this year I nearly forgot about any metal needle problems. It was only for this pattern, which calls for needles smaller than those I have in my Harmony set, that I branched out into different needle types.

I've liked Susan Bates needles for years. I like the light-grey coated ones, not too slippery, not too grabby. But after today, and considering my soresoresore fingers, I'll have to veto the Susan Bates, too. Perhaps the most devastating about the whole situation? I can't finish this beret until I get replacement needles!

2 comments:

Reckless Glue said...

Oh, I feel your pain...lately the not-being-able-to-wear-crappy-earrings thing has been getting me down...I never really realized my ears were so sensitive until very recently.
I found a great site for non-metal rings --rings don't bother me but I'm a bit of a mod/plastic jewelry junkie anyway, so maybe you'll think it's cool too:
http://www.thecarrotbox.com/
Just trolling her own collection of rings is pretty fun...
as for Needles--I love my Denise plastic set and use it for pretty much everything.

Jeanette said...

Wow, that site is fantastic. I love that jewelry! And rings do bother me--the only ones I can wear have to be gold if they're metal. But plastic doesn't bug me, so I'm gonna put some of those on my Christmas list!

And the earring thing is such a bummer. All the cute, kitschy earrings I wanna wear are some mystery metal, probably hecho en Mexico, too. But my sister did a cool thing for me: she got me a bunch of gold earring hooks and some pliers so I could replace the hooks on the earrings I did like. So far so good, and it's much cheaper than buying all my earrings in solid gold. :)