Scoubidou

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Scoubidou (Gimp, Scoubi, Scoobie, Boondoggle, or Lanyard) is a plaiting and knotting craft, originally aimed at children, which originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s. The name Scoubidou came from the late French singer Sacha Distel, who scored his first hit with the song of the same name in 1958. It came back into fashion in various countries, including the United Kingdom, in 2004 and 2005. It uses commercially supplied plastic strips or tubes.

Scoubidous are supple, round, hollow plastic tubes usually about 80 centimetres in length. They are sold in various colours, sizes and types. They are used to make various items by binding them together with special knots. Key chains, friendship bands and other trinkets are common, although more complicated shapes and figures can also be created

Most of the knots used in Scoubidou were already used in bast fibre, while the creations possible with Scoubidou are also similar in many ways to traditional corn dollys and to macrame.

Use around the world

United States

Known as Gimp, it is used for making lanyards. Lanyards of this type are usually made by children and camp counselors at summer camps. This lanyard is made by weaving several pieces of gimp into a three-dimensional design. Gimp is also often used to form animal designs, like dragonflies or penguins which are normally seen on children's backpacks, or many other designs such as flags, hearts, and trees.

Knots

Square Knot

Most common knot used in making boondoggle keychains. It uses two strands of gimp. The square knot is made by taking the ends, crossing opposite ends, then taking one of the other ends and going over the first string and going under the second string. To finish, the last end is weaved over the first strand and under the second strand.

A double square knot can be made using four strings, thus doubling the size of the keychain made. Again the process is done by weaving the ends alternately.

Spiral Knot

The spiral knot can be achieved by completing the actions of a square knot, but instead of crossing the ends straight over, the ends should be crossed diagonally. This causes the colors to spiral up the keychain instead of creating straight lines of color.

Double Spiral

Another knot is the double spiral which is the same concept as the spiral knot however the number of string is doubled. The procedure is also the same however the level of difficulty is a lot higher and starting the double spiral is a little harder to handle.

Cobra

This involves tying two strands around two other strands back and forth. A King Cobra is created when the strands are tied around the cobra itself, making it wider and larger.

Staircase

This involves tying one strand around one or more strands. The more strands are used in the middle the fatter staircase it is.

Butterfly

The involves putting one loop strand through another and then pulling the latter loop. The loops are then twisted together to look like a butterfly.

Popular culture

• For examples of Scoubidous in popular culture, see the movie Napoleon Dynamite (2004).

External links

• Scoubidous: a photoset on Flickr
• Scoubidou Instructions & Gallery
• Boondoggle Man
• Informative article on gimp
• Scoubidou website

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Last updated on Saturday March 08, 2008 at 21:00:10 PST (GMT -0800)
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