Monkey Fists

I picked up a few different colors of paracord, as well as some buckles, last week at REI. My hope is to make a paracord bracelet, except I got distracted along the way by a more challenging project. You see, the week before the REI trip, I picked up a cat toy that is essentially a monkey fist of scratchy sisal rope tied around a more conventional cat toy: one of those whiffle-ball-like things with a bell inside. I had never seen anything like that before and wondered how difficult they were to make. As it turns out: a little tricky to wrap your brain around at first but, soon thereafter, not too difficult at all. I used some of the paracord today and followed Stormdrane’s great monkey fist instructional video to make a bookmark and a single standalone monkey fist from some of the leftover cord cuttings. As best as I can tell, Stormdrane is the king of nifty paracord knotwork. If you are even remotely interested in this sort of thing, you should check out his instructional blog.

monkey fist bookmark monkey fist closeup

Incidentally, the fun shoelace design I tweeted about yesterday stemmed from the paracord research. This design was taken from the many beautiful ones at Ian’s Shoelace Site.

shoelaces

Posted in: Dear Diary Projects

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Brian Enigma

Brian Enigma is a Portlander, manipulator of atoms & bits, minor-league blogger, and all-around great guy. He typically writes about the interesting “maker” projects he's working on, but sometimes veers off into puzzles, software, games, local news, and current events.

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