Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Spinning and handedness

Laurie has a really interesting discussion going on on her blog about which hand is which when spinning.
She tells me that I'm one of the lucky ones who started with the dominant hand as the orifice hand. Since I'm a self-taught spinner, I had no teacher to put me on the path, so I had a fifty/fifty chance of getting it right, I guess.
I started with a spindle, and used my right (dominant) hand as the one that did all the fiddly bits - setting the spindle in motion, controlling the twist, keeping the wilder swings from clonking the cat in the nose, etc. When I started spinning with the wheel, it seemed natural to keep on using my left hand to hold the fiber and my right hand to control the twist.
Laurie, who learned to spin the other way around, is experimenting with switching her hands. The comments are full of interesting takes on the whole idea - whether to switch or not, how to switch, and whether the benefit is worth the cost.
I'm fascinated!

And since Horatio and Serafina got such a nice response, here's another of my little folk. (Please excuse the crappy picture. It was my old camera, and my photography skills still need a lot of work...)
This is Willoughbie, my little halfling friend. He loves to travel, and always accompanies me to craft shows I'm vending at. (I've always priced him way too high, because I hate to part with him. I pretend I'm trying to sell him, but secretly I'm not...)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry you couldn't be there on Saturday, too, don't you hate it when work gets in the way of knitting & fun??

(sorry to leave this in your comments but I can't find your email and you know how #$%^& Blogger leaves it off)

Joansie said...

Novice spinner here so I'm lucky I'm no longer spinning bungy cord.

Serafina...well, I can see why you don't want to part with him.

Laurie said...

Not sure where this experiment is going to end up, but boy, it motivated the longest comments I have ever received! It's been fun.