Child’s Play
If you’ve ever experienced summertime as a young girl, you’ve likely stumbled upon the craft that is friendship bracelets. We learn at camp, from our older sister, girlfriends, or YouTube. What a marvel it was to wear a bracelet of your own creation! Or better yet, adorn the wrist of your best friend.
I’m willing to bet the first bracelet you made was a Chinese staircase, chevron, or candy stripe pattern. Once you get past the initial frustration of tangling strings and erroneous knots, you find a groove. It’s easy to get lost in the repetitive motion. Each tightening of the strings solidifies one step closer to the final project.
Many regard this art as a child’s craft. You might pull a dusty case of embroidery floss out from under you bed and reminisce on your young summer pastime. For most, this hobby is simply that: a pastime of their youth.
My Experience
For me, this hobby is more than a seasonal activity or phase. As a child, I was thrusted into and surrounded by hands-on craft. My mom was an avid scrapbooker and card-maker. My fondest memories are of our trips to Michael’s and the crafts we worked on together.
This affinity for craft was a pattern throughout my childhood.
In August 2019 I discovered THE craft to end all crafts. A girl from my middle school group of friends gifted me a string anklet. This led me to buy my first set of strings, and explore what might be possible.
The Possibilities
It is relatively unknown that beyond the basic chevron there’s a world of possibilities. I personally use the website Braceletbook.com where one can find thousands of patterns as guides for their creativity. The bounds for what you might knot are truly endless.
It certainly wasn’t smooth sailing from the beginning. In the deep depths of my collection there are lopsided, bulging, and mishappen projects. I never found myself discouraged because there was always something new for me to try. Nothing compared to the high of finishing a project after spending meticulous hours on end deciphering and translating a pattern.
Where I Am Now
It sounds dramatic to obsess over such a simple hobby, but it’s hard to imagine my life before I always had a bracelet in progress taped to my desk. From my humble beginnings the summer before my freshman year of high school, to now, I have accomplished so much. I learned a slew of techniques and expanded my scope beyond the bracelet to make tapestry wall-hangings, keychains, and bookmarks.
As I am writing this, I just managed to finish my biggest project to date – 12,800 knots in total. An eleven-month process, start to finish. Throughout my time developing my craft, I documented my work on social media. I managed to amass a thousand followers (and counting) on my Instagram account @marion_knots. There is a way bigger community of knotters than I could have ever anticipated.
Why I Recommend This Hobby
To engage in this hobby takes not necessarily skill, but patience. This is what I tell everyone. You can do what I do, you just need to want to take the time to do it.
This has been an incredibly rewarding process for me. I am able to share my work with those around me, crafting gifts for special occasions in a way that is unique and sentimental. Intrinsically, I enjoy this hobby for the satisfactory feeling of spending time creating something beautiful that might outlast me. I have learned patience and the value of time all from such a simple activity.
I encourage everyone to try to make a bracelet. There is no inherent demographic for this hobby, though it may have consumed many of our childhoods. I look forward to a future where I can teach my children to make their own creations, and hand off my collection. I hope that they may become just as tied to the hobby as their mother.