OT: Fingernails

#1

I have short fingernails and have very recently tried to stop biting. I haven’t bitten in two days. Do you bite, or pick your nails? Do you have long or short nails? Do you keep them short for knitting? For those with long nails, do they get in the way at all?

#2

I have fairly short nails, but I don’t bite them. I used to a long time ago though.

#3

I usually have long fingernails, but I recently started playing water polo at my high school and they force us to cut them down to nothing -____-

#4

I started biting my nails very young because I seen my mom biting hers all the time. I would bite my nails down so far they would bleed and thought I could never stop. I was always so embarrased for people to watch me knitting because my nails looks so bad. When I got pregnant I decided to quit because I didn’t want my kid to pick up the habit from me. It’s really hard at first, but once you see your nails actually growing you really dont want to bite them anymore… atleast I didn’t. I keep my nails fairly long now and I don’t have problems knitting or anything. Good Luck!!! :hug:

#5

I started biting my nails at an extremely young age, too! Also because I watched my mother biting hers! LOL! She stopped and has lovely hands and nails now. But I have never been successful at stopping! I’m very, very fortunate that my daughter never acquired this naughty habit from me!! She has gorgeous hands/nails!

I think if I were to have nails now, at my age (nearly 50!) I wouldn’t know what to do with them, and they’d get in my way.

#6

hi
long nail bother me when i knit never did bite my nails
for those of you who do you can get a miserable infection and it is painful
it took my friend 2 months taking antibiotics to get rid of an infection
that really cured her of biting
sylvia

#7

My nails are very long and I paint them chartreuse.

Ok seriously, don’t bite your nails, it’s a nasty habit. Fingernails collect bacteria in a very bad way.

I do like seeing a woman with long, well cared-for nails. (Real ones not those acrylic things)

#8

You know it’s healthy to expose yourself to a bit of bacteria here and there.

I’ve always found the idea of nails themselves to be much more gross.

“Hey there sexy…dig that collection of excess keratin layers you’ve got growing on your phalanges there.Oh and look!You’ve even decided to emphasize them through the addition of some sort of lacquer to catch the light and attention of potential mates.”

I like when women wear colored nail polish because then you can’t [I]see[/I] their nails >_>

I don’t actually bite my nails for stress related reasons.Usually, it’s just because someone lost my nail clippers and they’re getting in my way.

#9

I used to bite my nails when I was a kid, but then I decided I wanted them to be long like my sister’s nails, and quit. Then I through my teens and twentys, I obsessed about my long nails and hated to break one. Now, I don’t care either way. I let them grow until they get in my way, then I cut them short and start all over. And if one breaks, I cut the rest off to match.

#10

I bit my nails from a very young age. My mother put all sorts of concoctions on them in an attempt to get me to stop. Nothing worked as I just licked/sucked the stuff off and kept on chewing. This continued until I was 30 years old. I moved to upstate New York where I was working in a machine shop. We recycled all the oil/coolant from the machines to be used again, and again. We just spun it to remove the metal chips that accumulated, put the oil in a drum and added it as necessary to the machines. Well when you work with a bunch of guys who dip, you know where they spit. Yup, right into the oil bath at the bottom of the machine. I had my hands in that oil as I was working. I would wash my hands very well to remove all the icky. One night I was watching some sort of crime show on television and they did some under the nail scrapings. There was all sorts of icky under there. I got to thinking about it and wondered if washing really gets the nails clean. It doesn’t!!! Then I got to thinking about all the icky stuff in that oil I was putting my hands into. I never bit my nails again. This is why plumbers never bite their nails. Think about this the next time you start to bite your nails.

#11

Thanks for the visual! BLAH!

LOL!

My mother used to put Tabasco sauce on my nails. And all it taught me was to like hot sauce! If she did that in this era - she would have been charged with child abuse!

#12

Actually I was just thinking about this. I do bite my nails, and have done so from a very young age. I try to stop, and have tried using the nasty tasting stuff that is supposed to stop the habit, but I still manage to gnaw off all of my nails on a regular basis.
Recently, though, I spent 3 months interning in animal care, and I came home with lovely long nails (which have been chewed off in the past month)
My mother hates animals, so I have lived most of my life without pets. My new solution to my nail-biting is to get myself a couple of pets as soon as I move into my new apartment (this was actually the plan anyway, it just has fresh relevence). This Saturday I’m buying myself a budgie!

#13

i keep mine cut as short as possible (which basically requires a weekly trim). The skin curls back from my nails so even if they’ve got barely any of the white part at the top of the nail showing, i’m constantly scratching myself (or others) unintentionally. They also break like there’s no tomorrow (I’m still a major tomboy… nails get in the way when throwing a football around with my kids!) or snag my yarn and proceed to really irritate me.

and as mason said, don’t bite your nails… all sorts of nasty disgusting things accumulate under them that you may not even realize!