Thursday, December 16, 2010

Wednesday Madhouse - Manual Dexterity.

A day late...whoops. So unused to posting to a time that I  totally forgot about this yesterday.

A few years back, whilst blog surfing, I read a post by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and it really hit a cord with me. She wrote about watching her hands whilst knitting and all the tiny movements and corrections knitters make that 99.9% they are not even aware of. Have you ever done that? Sat and actually watched your hands whilst you knit. It needs the kind of knitting that you do automatically, in my case a plain sock. It doesn't even matter whether it's circs or dpns, my hands make loads of little extra movements and adjustments I never knew about before reading the blog post.

I've done this with other things from sewing and drawing to peeling the spuds. I also now watch others hands when they knit, write, sew or build with Lego. We are so unaware of just how wonderful the connection  between our hands and brain is.

Hands that do. The little caresses and rubs that are included in a comfort hug. The nudge of the stitches closer to the needle point you don't know you are doing. The manipulation of your knife and fork. The hundreds of little extra movements from hundreds of un-felt and un-thought about signals through our nerves.

Go on. Watch your hands. Amazing.

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