Knit Out!

I 'heart' loading up a basket of yarn and in progress pieces, and getting in the car to GO KNIT.  (I'm a geek in many ways...)
Last night there were four of us lazily knitting in the cool comfort of Bee's geothermal induction cooled home.
All of us haven't progressed very far from a month ago, except Kee who threw up her hands in disgust as she mis-counted for the fourteenth time.  She then picked up her ICE (in case of emergency) knitting and settled into the rhythm of a garter stitch scarf.
Dee and I haven't seen each other since May because of travel on both our parts, and I was surprised that she was wearing a wrist/hand support on her right hand.  "Must make knitting a bit difficult," I say, and she replies, "A bit, but I'm NOT going to stop knitting!"  We all agreed, and then she picked up her project:  A baby blanket in the round, and proceeded to grunt, moan and tear at THEE most difficult row:  The row AFTER cabling 21 stitches over 21 stitches.
I never thought about it... but I have now!  The pull of the many stitches so far away from each other, being forced into a new order is, well, like this:

Go ahead and click on the above picture, and you'll see that the stitches are crammed together and so tight on the needle as to make moving them along almost impossible.  Dee worked on it for awhile, and I thought, "That's not doing her wrist/hand any good, and I love a good challenge..." so I said, "Would you like me to work on it for awhile?"  To my surprise, she handed it over.  I thought I'd hear something about knit gauge and no two knitters...(blah, blah, blah)  No such thing.  And, wow, was that something! I was pushing and pulling so hard I thought something was either going to break or suddenly let loose and all come off the needle, leading to the end of our friendship and possibly "knit nite" altogether.  An hour later I had managed to knit the 4 repeats to the end of the row, and lose only one marker in the process.  Good luck with THAT!  No one else, including me, thinks they'll be knitting THAT one anytime soon!!
Meanwhile, I look over and see an example of pooch-knitting! Makes me smile...