Nauruans often named their most impressive string figures after legendary women. According to local legend, Egattamma was Eidiowinago’s sister. She remained with her father when Eidiowinago went to the moon, as described in the March 2005 issue.
Once the central design motif is formed, the Amwangiyo finishing sequence is added first, to give the following design:
To improve the extension, the Nauru ending is added:
Other Nauruan finishing techniques can be applied once the central design motif has been formed, such as Eongatubabo...
...or Small Amwangiyo:
Figures that require artificial manipulation of the strings are tedious to make and lack a certain elegance. Furthermore, they often turn out lop-sided since it is very difficult to manipulate the strings symmetrically when ‘knots’ prevent them from sliding past one another smoothly.
For this reason, Dr. Thomas Storer devised an alternative construction that entirely eliminates artificial manipulation (pages 20-24). Except for two central string crossings, Storer’s Egattamma is identical to the traditional version.
