I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the guys on the beach making necklaces and bracelets out of the plastic string and then trying to sell it to you for a quarter. They have the stuff wrapped around their teeth and are pulling string with their toes and what not. I used to make those things when I was a kid at the Boys and Girls club in Tampa. It was a great way to kill time, and afterwards you had a gift for a cute girl.
\nWell, I found some of that string a few nights ago. Set aside for a holiday project, there were rolls of it.
\nI laughed at it at first. Memories.
\nThen my friend Yadi, a school teacher, saw the string while visiting and asked if we did arts and crafts. I assured her that there were better ways to spend our time. She joked that I needed to make something like the kids do, with cutout paper to demonstrate symmetry.
\nUh\u2026.yeah. OK.
\nAfter she left, I decided to make something for her out of the string, as a joke. I was going to make a keychain. So I went to the room around 10pm, and scored about 3 feet of 2 colors of string, then sat down in my room to make it. I remember that you have to get it set up, and then just cross one over the other and then it kinda builds itself.
\nBut how do you start? I tried a couple of things that were miserable fails, and then went to the instructional resource of the world, good ol’ YouTube. I’m sitting at the computer and I realize I have no idea how to search for for what I want.
\n“Plastic string keychain” – No results
\n“How to make plastic string knotted thing” – Nothing
\n“Plastic string from when you were a kid growing up in Tampa” – Still nothing
\nI’ll save you a lot of time. The stuff is called gimp. The knot is called a “box stitch”. Now you know what to search for.<\/p>\n
How it starts
\nSo I start my box stitch gimp necklace. This thing is a lot harder than I remembered. I’m holding string with my teeth, my hand are cramping up, my head is getting tired. This is actual work. I feel like I got myself in way to deep with the keychain project. I set the stuff aside and lay my head down. But I can’t sleep. I have to conquer this thing. I go back into it, this time shorting the string I was working with. It got easier. I was glad that I wasn’t scheduled for late night vital check, as they would have seen me looking like a baby gorilla sitting cross-legged on the bed playing with string. I can’t even say I was happy I had gotten myself into the project, but I was going to see it through. No quitting.
\nBut sleep is important, and my brain is tired again. Rest for an hour. Wake up and grab this thing. Now it’s like 5am, and I have finished. I mean, I’m running out of string to box. I realize I don’t know how to stop. Back to Youtube.
\n“How to close a box string”<\/p>\n
Looks like a bug
\nOh fk, I have to learn another knot. At 5am. I just want to sleep. I’m watching this 2 minute video over and over, and it would be such a simple thing if I could stay awake for the whole thing. There was drool on the iPad. Thank God for Huggies wipes.
\nFinally I get the knot, and I can’t be happier. However, when you finish this thing it doesn’t look like a keychain, it looks more like the attack drones in the Matrix. Like a 4 tailed sperm. I trimmed it down and it was more resembling a carrot sprig. I don’t want to cut the sting too short, since she might need to tie it or something. I decide to make a loop with the remaining string. I end up using hospital tape to close it up. I was reluctant, until I realize that this thing is marking a time that I am in the hospital.
\nI ended up making an Ankh out of it, quite unintentionally. When I finished I was proud to have seen it through. So many people had given me so much, and made so many sacrifices for me. I wasn’t just taking anymore. I had a gift for someone this Christmas. I’m not making another one of these. Go to the beach and give the guy a quarter.<\/p>\n
Then I slept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the guys on the beach making necklaces and bracelets out of the plastic string and then trying to sell it to you for … <\/p>\n