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Friday, July 17, 2009

Pet Peeves
Reflections in A Hand Mirror

This post was originally published in 2003 on Ambitatterous website.

A personal pet peeve of mine is the notion that left-handed tatters need only a hand mirror and a cursory understanding of geometry (more specifically, how to place a mirror at a 45-degree angle) to tat with the fluidity and efficiency of their right-handed cousins.

Anyone who has ever plied a tatting shuttle knows that it takes two hands (no matter which one is dominant) to tat, not one. Therefore, the tatter must read the instruction, apply the hand mirror to available images for reference, PUT DOWN THE MIRROR and pick up the shuttle -- thereby displacing the visual reference so critical to success in tatting's initial learning stages.

It's not as easy as it looks. Try mentally reversing the drawings (or photographs) generally found in, say, the standard crochet lace instruction booklet.

That's not to say that left-handed tatters don't accomplish the same flow and grace of motion that right-handed tatters do, because we do. As Georgia Seitz says, "There are as many ways to tat as there are tatters." In my opinion, it just takes longer for us lefties because of the mental gymnastics.

That said, every lefty encounters directional and joining challenges in their learning curves. These challenges may or may not be present in less sinister studies.

3 comments:

  1. I've taught two people who are left handed to tat. I'd always thought that they had an advantage because the left hand controls the VERY IMPORTANT tension. So anyway, one person sad directly across from me and mirrored everything I did so she did it the opposite of a right handed person. The other left handed person sat by me and did it the same. They both did quite well! That's with a live teacher though! We all do better with a live teacher, LOL!

    Well, what I really came over to say was thank you for entering my giveaway! Good luck to you!

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  2. Posted by FOX July 17, 2009 11:19 AM:
    Fox said...
    You should try being ambidextrous! It is a nightmare!
    (Major contributor to my dyslexic stumbling around in my world!)

    Folks think being right AND left is an advantage! HA!

    Thanks for the visit. I explained on my page about the pattern in my response to your comments. : )) Fox

    July 17, 2009 11:19 AM

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  3. Isdihara, Read your exciting response and again commented on the same page..... Which is the blog to comment - you have a few! Fox : )

    ReplyDelete