A Craft From My Past: Friendship Bracelets

Recently, we celebrated our daughter's b-day with our friends and family. One of the many cute presents she got, was a craft kit to make friendship bracelets. The kit includes Embroidery Floss (they named it "Friendship Floss") and basic instructions. Granted, basic friendship bracelets are easy to make, I wanted to learn how to make harder ones. When I was a kid, the internet wasn't something I had in my house...heck, I didn't even know what it was and I thought Oregon Trail was the most awesome computer game ever...well it still is pretty awesome. Now that it's many years later (you don't need to know how many), I can easily look up fancy patterns for friendship bracelets and help my daughter make them.

Here are some sites that specialize in these kid friendly bracelets:

Friendship Bracelets - They have basic knotting, existing patterns, a pattern generator, tutorials, a gallery, related links, and a forum to help your makery.

Knot Cool - They have their patterns divided by skill level, letters, numbers, additional uses (zipper pulls, shoe laces, etc.), and finishing.

There are some other sites with fewer design options, but these seem to be the best two.

One of the other things that makes me think of Friendship Bracelets, is hemp knotting. I have a few good knot work books, though there doesn't seem to be much in the way of online instructions, there is a good list of hemp knot videos on YouTube. I find hemp knotting much easier and textural than Friendship Bracelets. This is probably because of the difference in supplies...embroidery floss vs. Hemp cord. Both are fairly inexpensive. Ok, that is all for now. Happy crafting...and knotting.