An interesting discussion! By the time I was 13 years old, it was apparent that I was near-sighted, not far-sighted. My vision continued to change as I grew older. However, regardless of how hard it was for me to see at a distance, all I had to do was take my glasses off and and could see in perfect vision at very close- up!! As a lacemaker, I often embrace this gift when wanting to see something more clearly... I just poke the glasses up on my nose and look under them!
My theory is that those young people who turned out to be farsighted as adults had to struggle, and then were considered blind. But those who were near-sighted were actually more prone to succeed in the field. So... I don't know what the statistics are for the visual acuity of lacemakers today, but I suspect that most of us have sufficient health care which provides us with visual exams as well. Not being well-informed on every country's options, I can only hope... Clay Sent from my iPad On Oct 26, 2012, at 8:51 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Another theory that I have heard is that when people age and their eyes > lose the elasticity for focusing at different focal lengths, resulting in > needing bi-focals, this may have been a bit of a career ender for people who > had to focus at close distances for fine lace work and who didn't have > bi-focals. So they may not have been blind so much as too blind at close > which > distances to make lace anymore. I believe my eye doctor made the claim that > this > process by which your close distance focusing starts to deteriorate starts > at 39 1/2 years of age. > - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003/albums/most-recent
