ambidextrous – Deborah Makarios

December 14, 2023December 14, 2023

In Praise of Old Technology: the Sewing Box

For those who are so misfortunate as to have never encountered one, allow me to provide a definition. A sewing box is a toolbox for needlework. It may take the form of a box, a basket, or – if one happens to have friends with deep pockets and dainty taste – an elegant table, an egg, or even a converted walnut shell. (In the case of the person with deep pockets and no taste, there is such a thing as a rhino foot sewing box.)

Painting: a woman sits by a table sewing. On the table is an open sewing box. On the floor beside her is a basket of sewing, possibly mending.

I have recently managed to acquire one of these delectable items (a box, not the disjecta membra of maimed African megafauna) and I don’t know how I managed for so long without one.

Continue & Comment

March 7, 2019

The Problem with Ambidextrosity

(besides the fact that it isn’t really a word.)

Let us suppose for a moment, that, like Horatio Nelson, you lose the use of your dominant hand.

You don’t have to be as dramatic about the actual losing of use – though feel free to make up any kind of back-story you like; blood and gore totally optional – the point at hand (hur hur, sorry) is how one copes with said loss of function. And this is where I am at a loss. Because while I have a reasonably active imagination (Exhibit A), what I do not have is a dominant hand.

Continue & Comment