Well, Kat knows her Mudcatters all right - I read the Puss' message, went offline to gather a bunch of URLS, and came back to find a party in progress (what'd I miss?) but... anyway... here's my original post [clears throat]:
Bagpuss - Be very VERY careful not to simply disregard pain. It could be tendonitis, also known as R.S.I. (Repetitive Strain Injury) which is due to wear, and initially doesn't hurt enough to cause alarm, so people tend to just "work through" it. But R.S.I. doesn't go away, it gets suddenly, dramatically worse and can - if aggravated for long enough - permanently cripple you. This isn't the place for horror stories but the online support forums are full of them. The explosion in computer use has brought it to public attention in recent years; but musicians and handcrafters (such as knitters) have always been a high-risk group.
Please look at some of the URLs below and surf around via an engine (I used Google) and do some research. Don't just ignore it! Over and over again I hear people who are now disabled for life (I'm not exaggerating: I know some of them personally) say "if only someone had warned me". Well, someone is! It MAY be simple muscle pain (whatever exactly that is) but you don't know for sure and it's too big a chance to take.
Bottom line, you need to stop doing whatever is causing the pain UNTIL IT IS WELL GONE and let the injury heal, in case it's more than sore muscles.
There is a national R.S.I. Awareness Day coming up soon (Thursday?) so perhaps look out for info? Best of luck and keep us posted! Bonnie
www.repetitive-strain-injury.com
http://www.rsi-uk.org.uk/
http://www.engr.unl.edu/ee/eeshop/rsi.html Paul Marxhausen's page
http://www.ctdrn.org/rsi-support/index.html RSI forum for above
http://www.rsihelp.com/index.html Deborah Quilter's page
www.rsiprogram.com
http://www.rsi.about.com/
http://www.rsi-center.com/html/EN/rsisearch/ RSI-dedicated search engine
http://www.certifiedpst.com/arms/ Assn for Repetitive Motion Syndromes
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/it/RSI/rsi.htm University of Leeds
www.injurytreatment.com.au