Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Making a Rope Rug

OK, I lied. I said the next blog entry would be on how to make a RollBar forearm trainer to supplement your Gstring workout. It's the new year and I thought the depths of winter may have some of you looking for something creative to do indoors.

Sooo...whadda ya do?  It's winter, you don't ice climb, you've pulled down on plastic and done all the routes you're capable of multiple times, and you've trained on your Gstrings till your arms feel like spaghetti...

...Well if you're a trad or sport climber and have an old rope lying around you can learn the art of making a beautiful and useful rope rug out of it. What a great way to recycle a retired rope! I have seen several different patterns and methods but I like the woven rectangular ones best. I've woven quite a few in the past and then sold and donated the money to the Access Fund, so I've gained a lot of experience and developed my own method over time. 

When SICgrips started up there wasn't any spare time to continue rug-making. However I didn't want the experience I'd gained to be lost so I posted step-by-step instructions in a thread on the Supertopo forum. The information became a bit scattered over time so it was hard to track down all the hints and tips. A while back I gathered all the posts together and put it up on the SICgrips website. If you're interested in giving it a try, you can check it out here. You can also Google "climbing rope rug" and find other interesting weaving patterns, as well as how to do spiral rugs. 

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OK, I promise...next blog will be how to make a RollBar to augment your Gstring training.