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beta_vulgaris) wrote2013-10-12 11:59 am
beta_vulgaris) wrote2013-10-12 11:59 am
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New Rope and practice!
My rope order finally arrived a couple of days ago, almost a month after I ordered it! It is worth the wait.
After my first rope group I went on a bit of a binge and ordered a variety of ropes from MauiKink.com. At the rope group, we got to handle a range of ropes and a couple of them interested me enough to get a piece or two of to see how they feel. Also, Maui will dye the ropes you purchase in a variety of colors, which is kind of great! Plus they threw in a free safety shears, which was considerate of them. Here's my haul:
I ordered 15ft coconut rope, 25ft 5mm linen rope (royal blue), 15ft 5mm linen rope (natural), 30ft natural jute rope, 15ft natural jute rope, 25ft 4mm hemp rope (royal blue), 15ft 4mm hemp rope (red), 10ft 4mm hemp rope (purple).
We're just doing some basic cuff and tie practice with these ropes and here are some pics (my young lady came by tonight and participated in the experimentation, so some of these pics are of my legs and some are of hers, posted here with her permission). The books I reference are discussed more thoroughly below the images--the two I used tonight are by Jay Wiseman and Midori.
And now, the rope!
Jute: This is a traditional material used for shibari practice. It's similar to hemp in some ways, but has a bit more crinkly, straw-like feel to the fiber. Of course this is new rope and it will soften with use, but I'm finding it very easy to work, attractive, and delightfully stable--it doesn't slip or stretch and stays put against itself, which makes it ideal for the kinds of tension-based ties that shibari typically employs. It's a bit stiff and scratchy and has a skin feel smilar to hemp. Here is the jute with a looped lark's-head cuff:
And here's a more involved piece, adapted and simplified by combining a tie from Midori's book with an easy cuff from Wiseman. Look how beautifully it wraps for the column tie! Gosh I am enjoying this rope:
Hemp: An old favorite of mine! The hemp I've had for a while is from Mr. S Leather and is 5/16" of natural hemp, which is on the thick side for bondage rope. The hemp I just got is 4mm thick, which is really very thin for bondage--I figure on using it for more delicate work with wrists and decorative ties. The thin stuff is pretty but kind of a pain to work with--I'll need to soften the rope a bit to get it to behave a little more easily--it is currently retaining the coils from the way it was hanked when it came.
Here is the same cuff, a Texas handcuffs with a bight, tied (not very securely) with hemp--the thick kind and the thin kind, respectively:
Linen: This is such a *sweet* material. It is beautiful to work with, reasonably sleek without being slippery, and the diameter of this rope (5mm) is, I think, my favorite width to use. It smells a little like washed hemp, sort of grainy. The hemp smells a bit more like a barn, both smell delectable and okay just thinking about it makes me want to rub my face all over them, gosh. Hemp is the first material I imprinted on, so there's a deep specific physical appreciation I have for it, but wow. Linen is subtle and gorgeous and graceful and strong in a way I'm very taken with right now.
Here is a wrist-to-ankle tie I adapted from a more elaborate piece in Midori's book:
Coconut: I am a pain slut, okay, and I love sensation, and while coconut doesn't *hurt* just to wear, it's very easy to see how it COULD hurt if used correctly. It has very wiry fibers that stick out a lot, and while it's quite thin, I found that it made lovely scratchy cuffs when wrapped 6 times or so around the ankle, and was surprisingly easy to work with (aside from being, well, itchy as hell). It's certainly a dissimilar experience of bondage from the other materials but I, perhaps unsurprisingly, am very interested to see what can be done with it :)
Here's a closeup of it so you can see the wiriness of the coconut:
The length of coconut I have is short, so this is like an abbreviated (and very ineffective) version of the linen tie I did above, this one is on myself:
Cotton: I already had this 30ft hank of black cotton bondage rope, bought at my local women's sex shop. It's soft and easy to manipulate and looks pretty, but its stretchiness and give make it kind of annoying to work with if you are trying to do something that involves tension (as I was), and I eventually gave up trying to make it look even and attractive.
Here's a lazy ladder thing I tried to recreate from rope group last month. It's amazing how quickly I forget how to do these things!
ManualsI figured I might as well take this opportunity to try learning some new stuff, and that for me meant using books I haven't really used for bondage before. I've traditionally used the Knotty Boys books because their instructions are so step-by-step with photographs that are really visually easy for me to interpret, at least most of the time. But this time I turned to Jay Wiseman's Erotic Bondage Handbook, which has lots of text but only a few hand-drawn illustrations, and Midori's The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, which features rather more hand-drawn illustrations.
Wiseman's approach is to teach you basic units that you can apply more broadly, in terms of practical cuffs and ties for (as the title suggests) bondage aimed at sex. That said, once i managed to figure out his illustrations/text, I found his techniques simple and reasonably easy to follow. He's good as a resource for a quick, practical solution for applied bondage, and for a lot of the basics of bondage safety and rope care and things like that.
Midori is a bit more into the spiritual aspects of bondage, and has a rather... whimsical writing style, so I mostly stuck to the actual illustrated instructions. These were difficult to follow (describing rope work is really difficult, yes but.) In the end we did manage to figure what she meant, and anyhow the tie worked for a picture! There were a couple here that I'd love to use in a d/s scenario someday, and I liked the shibari-centered approach. Midori is concerned with the aesthetic and the experience as much as the practicality, and I did appreciate that--her pieces have a wholeness to them that I find appealing.
Working from new books, and comparing to the different kinds of information I was trying to take in for the more experienced tops at rope class, tell me that while there are a lot of somewhat basic principles to bondage, there are really different approaches both to teaching it and, more deeply, thinking about it as a practice. There are things I like about each of the manuals I have and things I don't like about them, and it's almost more useful to be learning in a way that I see my differences from these writers, because it solidifies what I'm interested in actually doing for me, and I feel like there's room to develop my interests and preferences in ways that are interesting and liberating in this area.
I am coming to really enjoy bondage practice sessions. My recent interest in process-oriented work is kind of leading me here, where I'm seeing rope as a craft I'm learning like any other art I practice, and the tunnel-vision intensity I get with, say, drawing or creating a print--complete with the frustrations and moments of inspiration spicing up the steady focus of it, is really lovely. I also love scening with rope, obviously, and experiencing it as an exploration of connection with another human being, finding intensity together and playing, but practice feels different from that and I'm finding it very rewarding right now, whether it's self-bondage practice or with a willing partner. I'm hoping to get some mentoring from folks at the Hitchin' Bitches group, though of course I didn't make it there this month, sadly.
Okay, this got long! Feel free to ask any questions or whatever. Obviously I am no expert, I'm just learning, but I'm happy to talk about how this all feels!
After my first rope group I went on a bit of a binge and ordered a variety of ropes from MauiKink.com. At the rope group, we got to handle a range of ropes and a couple of them interested me enough to get a piece or two of to see how they feel. Also, Maui will dye the ropes you purchase in a variety of colors, which is kind of great! Plus they threw in a free safety shears, which was considerate of them. Here's my haul:
I ordered 15ft coconut rope, 25ft 5mm linen rope (royal blue), 15ft 5mm linen rope (natural), 30ft natural jute rope, 15ft natural jute rope, 25ft 4mm hemp rope (royal blue), 15ft 4mm hemp rope (red), 10ft 4mm hemp rope (purple).
We're just doing some basic cuff and tie practice with these ropes and here are some pics (my young lady came by tonight and participated in the experimentation, so some of these pics are of my legs and some are of hers, posted here with her permission). The books I reference are discussed more thoroughly below the images--the two I used tonight are by Jay Wiseman and Midori.
And now, the rope!
Jute: This is a traditional material used for shibari practice. It's similar to hemp in some ways, but has a bit more crinkly, straw-like feel to the fiber. Of course this is new rope and it will soften with use, but I'm finding it very easy to work, attractive, and delightfully stable--it doesn't slip or stretch and stays put against itself, which makes it ideal for the kinds of tension-based ties that shibari typically employs. It's a bit stiff and scratchy and has a skin feel smilar to hemp. Here is the jute with a looped lark's-head cuff:
And here's a more involved piece, adapted and simplified by combining a tie from Midori's book with an easy cuff from Wiseman. Look how beautifully it wraps for the column tie! Gosh I am enjoying this rope:
Hemp: An old favorite of mine! The hemp I've had for a while is from Mr. S Leather and is 5/16" of natural hemp, which is on the thick side for bondage rope. The hemp I just got is 4mm thick, which is really very thin for bondage--I figure on using it for more delicate work with wrists and decorative ties. The thin stuff is pretty but kind of a pain to work with--I'll need to soften the rope a bit to get it to behave a little more easily--it is currently retaining the coils from the way it was hanked when it came.
Here is the same cuff, a Texas handcuffs with a bight, tied (not very securely) with hemp--the thick kind and the thin kind, respectively:
Linen: This is such a *sweet* material. It is beautiful to work with, reasonably sleek without being slippery, and the diameter of this rope (5mm) is, I think, my favorite width to use. It smells a little like washed hemp, sort of grainy. The hemp smells a bit more like a barn, both smell delectable and okay just thinking about it makes me want to rub my face all over them, gosh. Hemp is the first material I imprinted on, so there's a deep specific physical appreciation I have for it, but wow. Linen is subtle and gorgeous and graceful and strong in a way I'm very taken with right now.
Here is a wrist-to-ankle tie I adapted from a more elaborate piece in Midori's book:
Coconut: I am a pain slut, okay, and I love sensation, and while coconut doesn't *hurt* just to wear, it's very easy to see how it COULD hurt if used correctly. It has very wiry fibers that stick out a lot, and while it's quite thin, I found that it made lovely scratchy cuffs when wrapped 6 times or so around the ankle, and was surprisingly easy to work with (aside from being, well, itchy as hell). It's certainly a dissimilar experience of bondage from the other materials but I, perhaps unsurprisingly, am very interested to see what can be done with it :)
Here's a closeup of it so you can see the wiriness of the coconut:
The length of coconut I have is short, so this is like an abbreviated (and very ineffective) version of the linen tie I did above, this one is on myself:
Cotton: I already had this 30ft hank of black cotton bondage rope, bought at my local women's sex shop. It's soft and easy to manipulate and looks pretty, but its stretchiness and give make it kind of annoying to work with if you are trying to do something that involves tension (as I was), and I eventually gave up trying to make it look even and attractive.
Here's a lazy ladder thing I tried to recreate from rope group last month. It's amazing how quickly I forget how to do these things!
ManualsI figured I might as well take this opportunity to try learning some new stuff, and that for me meant using books I haven't really used for bondage before. I've traditionally used the Knotty Boys books because their instructions are so step-by-step with photographs that are really visually easy for me to interpret, at least most of the time. But this time I turned to Jay Wiseman's Erotic Bondage Handbook, which has lots of text but only a few hand-drawn illustrations, and Midori's The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, which features rather more hand-drawn illustrations.
Wiseman's approach is to teach you basic units that you can apply more broadly, in terms of practical cuffs and ties for (as the title suggests) bondage aimed at sex. That said, once i managed to figure out his illustrations/text, I found his techniques simple and reasonably easy to follow. He's good as a resource for a quick, practical solution for applied bondage, and for a lot of the basics of bondage safety and rope care and things like that.
Midori is a bit more into the spiritual aspects of bondage, and has a rather... whimsical writing style, so I mostly stuck to the actual illustrated instructions. These were difficult to follow (describing rope work is really difficult, yes but.) In the end we did manage to figure what she meant, and anyhow the tie worked for a picture! There were a couple here that I'd love to use in a d/s scenario someday, and I liked the shibari-centered approach. Midori is concerned with the aesthetic and the experience as much as the practicality, and I did appreciate that--her pieces have a wholeness to them that I find appealing.
Working from new books, and comparing to the different kinds of information I was trying to take in for the more experienced tops at rope class, tell me that while there are a lot of somewhat basic principles to bondage, there are really different approaches both to teaching it and, more deeply, thinking about it as a practice. There are things I like about each of the manuals I have and things I don't like about them, and it's almost more useful to be learning in a way that I see my differences from these writers, because it solidifies what I'm interested in actually doing for me, and I feel like there's room to develop my interests and preferences in ways that are interesting and liberating in this area.
I am coming to really enjoy bondage practice sessions. My recent interest in process-oriented work is kind of leading me here, where I'm seeing rope as a craft I'm learning like any other art I practice, and the tunnel-vision intensity I get with, say, drawing or creating a print--complete with the frustrations and moments of inspiration spicing up the steady focus of it, is really lovely. I also love scening with rope, obviously, and experiencing it as an exploration of connection with another human being, finding intensity together and playing, but practice feels different from that and I'm finding it very rewarding right now, whether it's self-bondage practice or with a willing partner. I'm hoping to get some mentoring from folks at the Hitchin' Bitches group, though of course I didn't make it there this month, sadly.
Okay, this got long! Feel free to ask any questions or whatever. Obviously I am no expert, I'm just learning, but I'm happy to talk about how this all feels!