Rope

For the month we stayed in South Africa, Ruben went to a Waldorf Kindergarten. I spent a week hanging out there. I'm not going to expand now on how I was inspired, encouraged, and challenged. I am going to expand on the essential ingredient that I realised was lacking in our life... rope.
A thick, substantial and strong piece of rope has many uses in life...

• Spend a age over the mystery that is tying and weaving a sturdy knot.
• Spend another age over the mystery that is untying a sturdy knot.
• Tie between chairs, hang over a piece of cloth, voilà, a tent.
• Essential for dragging cuddly toys across the floor.
• Keep your boat tied at harbour.
• Throw over a branch, or an open door, and it's a pulley-rope to heave buckets and blocks.
• Left fallen on the floor it's a snake, or a river.
• Skipping.
• Around the waist and bunched up for a horses tail.
• Rope + stick = fishing
• Bunched on your head, a wig of hair.
• Weave a spider web.
• Harness a horse.
  
• Since we saw "Peter and the Wolf" on Friday the rope has been a lasso and guess who has to be the wolf? (Not so easy when you're cooking).
• Tie-up a child and see how long it takes from them to get free.
  

So, where to get a rope...
Synthetic cord is abrasive and hard to tie. Natural fibre ropes don't hang-out in North London. At the kindergarten the ropes were crocheted. I can't crochet (I know it's super-easy and I'm sure one day I'll learn blah).

This mat is where I place my feet every morning.
I spent the first ten years of my life with plaits on either side of my head.
I can do plaits.
So cloth plaits it is, like those the rug is made of. (Perhaps I will make one of these rugs too. I was going to wait til I was over 60 but I'm getting impatient).

I used a mix of old t-shirts and cotton sheeting. The combination of stretchy and not stretchy fabric works well and gives strength. To get long strips of cloth I cut the t-shirts as above, at an angle. I cut strips about 6cm wide of the t-shirt jersey fabric and 10cm wide of the sheeting, to give it the same bulk as the jersey. This rope takes my son's 20 kilo weight!

You can also stitch strips together to create the length needed, and you could keep adding as you are braiding. 3 metres of rope is a useful catch-a-wolf amount.


To begin sew the three pieces together. Plaiting very long strips is difficult, I found the best way was to wind them into balls, tucking in a piece to stop the ball unravelling and unwinding more as needed. It gets much easier after halfway. Then just stitch the ends together making sure you sew through all 3 layers a few times.


These plaited ropes feel really good, satisfyingly firm and soft. They stretch, but they're strong. They make wonderfully fat knots, that are easy to tie and untie. Can I praise them any more? I could get started on the metaphors; the need to make ties; learning how and when to let go; the umbilical cord attachment re-enacted; unravelling the knots of life. OK, shut-up time. Can you tell that I am procrastinating?