Solo To Twist Rope

[Fallan Windchaser]

60 Fall, 513AV

The Sea of Grass was home to the Drykas, but it was more than just a place to live, it also provided nearly everything that the Drykas needed to live. One of the things that every Drykas needed at some point was cordage for it supplied everything from bowstrings, through fishing lines to the very ropes which kept the pavilions up, and nearly all the Drykas had the skill to make at least the most basic forms of cordage so that when out in the grasslands they could make cords to tie things to the yvas or even to repair the straps of the yvas at need.

Like many skills the methods used for each of these varied depending on the intended use and on the available materials and like many other skills Fallan had realised that he had lost some of the dexterity that he had once had as a child in the making of cordage. He had as a result set aside some time to remind himself and his fingers of the skills that they once had.

Grass was an obvious choice out here, but in some places and with some plants the roots were better and some did not even need to be worked but could be used as they were for they could be fibrous and tough even to cut never mind to break. But this day it was indeed grass that he intended to use and in the Fall much of the grass had now gone brown which made it an ideal choice. With his knife he harvested a quantity of fine stems which were growing a little more than knee high and he had also trimmed off any seed heads which were still clinging to the stems. He had not needed much, just a double handful to create a cord which he could then coil and put into his kit against future need. Whilst it was good to be able to improvise at need, sometimes it was also useful to have an emergency supply of some things, and few things were as useful as cord.

The grass had been soaked for a short while so that it had gained back some of its pliability as dry it had a tendency to crack and break. Taking half a dozen stems in hand he tied their bases together with an overhand knot then split the stems apart into two bundles of three strands. The exact number didn’t matter so long as the two smaller bundles were even, but it needed at least two strands in each bundle and could have as many as was physically possible to twist.

Holding the knot in his left hand and with the stems running through his right hand he held the bottom bundle steady with finger and thumb of his left hand whilst with his right hand he twisted the now top bundle away from him and at the same time brought it back towards him and over the bottom strand. He clamped the crossing point with his left thumb and repeated the process with his right hand, twisting away the top bundle whilst bring in back down and over the bottom bundle.

With a little practice his fingers soon found the rhythm of it and he was soon working much quicker, only delayed by taking a little more care when it came to bringing in a new bundle to replace one that was petering out. When he was satisfied that he’d made enough then he tied another overhand knot and cut off the excess untwisted grass.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With one piece of cordage done it was time to up the game a little and move on to a three strand cord which would lay as round and more even than the two part plait, it should also be a little tighter in the weave if he got the tension right.

This time he used nine strands of grass and as before tied the ends so that the cord had a base and did not immediately unwind itself. He settled himself down so that he sat on his left leg while his right was raised so that his thigh was flat to the ground and then split the bundle of grass into three even sections, each of three strands. Spreading them apart with the knot in the fingers of his left hand he placed the palm of his right hand down over them and then pushed his hand away, rolling the strands down his thigh.

It took several attempts to get the motion right for there were a number of things that could go wrong with this including not applying the right tension with his left hand. When done correctly which he finally managed after several attempts was that with the knot held still in his left fingers, as the strands were rolled clockways down his thigh, so then they acted to twine around each other and with a little care would lay themselves neatly to create the three strand cord that he had wanted.

He shifted his left thumb and fingers forward to lock the point at which the cord was made up to. This method was much faster than the previous one, at least at any rate when it went right. That however was far from a given and he soon found that it was hard to be consistent for one good turn was followed by an appalling one where he needed to unwind the previous section. Then too it was often hard to get all of the strands to twist either evenly or even at all.

Bringing in a new strand to replace an old one was also much more difficult and as a result also much messier for it left a lump in the cord where one strand was doubled up. Since the strands needed to be renewed quite frequently as there were three of them and the grass not that long once it was twisted he was left with a fairly uneven and lumpy looking cord which he wasn’t overly happy with and it wasn’t long before he was starting to experiment with ways of avoiding it by bringing in individual strands into the small bundles rather than attempting to bring in a whole bundle at once. This seemed to work much better, at least in terms of not having unsightly lumps along the cord but the price was a vast reduction in speed and in making the process much harder and more delicate to do.

Eventually he decided that he had enough too of this lumpy and bumpy cord and so tied it off and neatened up the end with his knife.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Having renewed the muscle memory in his fingers and woken up the memories which were stored in his mind Fallan sat back from his work with grass and as he wound up the latest short cord that he’d made he considered the options that remained.

Proper rope making was one thing that he had never attempted, it being a somewhat specialist skill that needed some tools and normally more than one person, at least from the times he had seen it being made. That being taken for granted the skills that he did know allowed him to make light weight ropes. The reason for the use of specialist tools, and they didn’t appear that complex had rather more to do with speeding up the process than because his current knowledge and skills were not up to the task.

The three core laid cord could have more strands, but the simplest way to make thicker and stronger cord was to simply make more cord like that and then to lay three cords together in exactly the same way to create a thicker and stronger cord or light rope. One thing that he had not really done with what he had made was to test it, and that was always key to cordage for the last thing anyone needed was a cord to break just when it was needed.

Grass was always available here in the Sea of Grass but that didn’t mean that it was always suitable for use and fact it was Summer and Fall where it was the easiest to gather and use, and that was true for many of the plant providers of the fibre for cordage. In Winter the tall stems tended to wither away and the fibres rot and in Spring the new growth was still too soft, so other sources needed to be found and for the Drykas there was always the possibility of collecting the longer hairs from the horses when they were being groomed and the cattle as well, though this was mostly when they were slaughtered. Wild animal carcases were also a source of hair too if they were plant eaters that used their tails to swish at flies.

Very little went to waste in a Drykas encampment and when things were discarded it was either because it was too badly worn to use or because there was a surplus which made no sense to carry. Twisting was not the only way to make cordage for it too could be woven or braided and he knew well enough how to braid leather, so that was another method of creating cordage and that applied as well to carcases as it did to anything else. Even the cord that he had woven from grass could also be braided into other things, that he had done so from leather did not mean that it was the only material that could be used. Braided cords did not have to be round which was one reason for using them rather than using one of the twisting methods he had used with the grass.

[Fallan Windchaser]

With his thoughts put to one side it was time to put the next step of his refresher sessions into practice and for this he needed horse hair or something similar and so he made himself useful, entering into some bargains with other members of his family so that he could groom their horses in return for keeping the longer hairs if he wished. Each horse did not provide much hair for they were kept well groomed but a little from each was what he needed for he had not a huge project in mind. He spent some time wandering the camp too, looking for those places that the horses chose to scratch and from some of them he pulled free some of the coarse and wiry hairs.

It was too his turn to be out with the herd that day and the horses in it were less well groomed than the personal horses of the family. Then too sometimes they were not that interested in being groomed either, but equally it was something that they needed to become used to if they were ever to be sold which was a large part of their purpose, breeding stock aside.

By the end of his time with the herd he had accumulated a loose handful which he counted as a good result and better than he’d hoped. He dismounted at a stream and carefully rinsed the hairs free of the dirt and mess which any tail hair was going to accumulate, attempting to keep as far as possible the hairs from tangling, carefully working through with the curry comb to separate them without forcing it through and risking breaking some of the carefully collected hairs. He tied off the ends and hung it from his yvas. Whilst he was tempted to make a start on it, he was not yet confident enough of his skills to be able to do that and watch the herd at the same time. With practice he knew that it could be done and was a common pastime for the herders amongst others as they used the time in watching whilst their hands moved in automatic movements spinning hair and other gathered fibres into cordage.

Back at the pavilion he checked the fibres were free and selecting some he dampened them just a little to make them easier to grip and work with tied off a small bundle and separated them out into the three smaller bundles. This he intended to be a fine and yet strong cord which made the best use of the small amount of hair he had available to use.

Once more he held the knot in his left hand, and rolled the three small bundles down his thigh so that they kinked up and as they did so he pulled back gently with his left finger and thumb so that the twisting fibres fell into a neat cord, changing the speed of his roll and pulling as needed to make that happen. Clamping the newly twisted and fine cord carefully he lifted the three small bundles up to the top of his thigh and rolled again.