Grass ropes are a fun and easy activity for any group of people, from adults to kids as young as 7 or 8 years old. Building the rope requires teamwork and cooperation. Testing the strength of the rope through games of tug-o-war is an opportunity for great camaraderie and raucous competition. All can be accomplished in less than an hour.
My interest in grass ropes grew out of frustration in trying to teach kids how to make cordage with traditional fibers like dogbane or stinging nettles. Cordage-making is essential to many other skills, used for everything from trap strings and snares to fishing line and fish nets, hammocks, bow and bowdrill strings, woven bags, lashing, sewing, and tying things up.
Yet, cordage is a complex skill, which requires fine dexterity to initially separate the fibers from plant stalks and subsequently to spin those fibers into quality cordage. It can be quite an accomplishment for a kid to make just enough cordage for a bracelet. And, as essential as cordage may be, we seldom found any more appropriate application for it in our youth programs.
I figured that kids could get much more excited about cordage if we could scale it up to a size they could manipulate and play with. Making ropes from grass seemed like an ideal way to go, if we could figure out a good system for making them.
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#ropemaking #grassropes #cordage
