making rope and braid with foraged plant materials

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this class. It made me want to go out and try making rope out of any old random vegetation I might come across. As mentioned in an earlier post, I had thought it was going to be somewhat difficult, but once you got into a rhythm, it was hard to stop. While we were discussing, I did notice that thing Dr. Gerofsky had mentioned, about how chatting flows a little more easily when our hands are busy working away. As I mentioned in class, it was nifty to think of our distant ancestors busy at rope making within their communities. I was surprised to find some people in the class were thinking more so in terms of the more recent north American Indigenous peoples, and I hope my points didn't come off as a "cultural appropriation" kind of thing. In my head, I was thinking about our ancient homo sapien ancestors of 30,000 years ago. In that sense, the act of rope making is something that's part of the same history shared by all humankind. And then aside from all that, I did enjoy the physics aspect of rope making, and I appreciate that this simple technology could be worked into a physics lesson, discussing the opposing friction forces generated from twisting strands around each other in the opposite directions. In general, it was a cool lesson because it engaged many different senses, involved getting in touch with nature and our shared history, and then also had some math and physics ideas surrounding it.