One of the most interesting parts of learning new skills is finding out what it does to my hands. For example, knitting gives callouses on my fingertips where the needle grazes my skin. Crochet gives a callous on the inside of my right thumb where the hook rests. Natural dyeing hardened my hands entirely from repeatedly ignoring warnings not to immerse them in an iron bath to fish out some errant piece of wool. Cooking (with no spatula to hand) has made my fingertips insensate to heat from flipping tortillas. Carding (wool and cotton) gives big callouses across the palms of both hands. Guitar gives those telltale hard fingertips and, with practice, easy nimble movement.
Pottery, I'm learning, makes my hands even harder, and is making my nail beds very tidy and sanding away the lifetime worth of constant hangnails. Who would have thought ?
