Scoubidou (Lanyard, Scoubi, Scoobie, Boondoggle, or Gimp) is a plaiting and knotting craft, originally aimed at children. It originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s and has remained popular. The name "Scoubidou" comes from the late French singer Sacha Distel, who scored his first hit with the song of the same name in 1958.
Scoubidou returned to fashion in various countries, including the United Kingdom, in 2004 and 2005. It uses commercially supplied plastic strips or tubes.[1]
The most common kind of thread used for the craft is flat and comes in many different colors. Another kind of scoubidou thread is supple, round and hollow plasticized PVC tubes usually about 80 centimetres in length. They are sold in various colours, sizes and types, and are used to make various items by binding them together with special knots. On account of their elasticity and hollow cross-section — which allow them to collapse and deform when pulled — they can easily form extremely tight and stable knots. Key chains, friendship bands and other trinkets are most commonly woven, although more complicated shapes and figures can also be created.[2]
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 dollies and macrame.
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Known as lanyard, craftlace, boondoggle, or gimp (also spelled "gymp"), 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. Some children use it to make gifts for each other.
Also known as a box knot, the square knot is the most common knot used in making keychains. It uses two strands of gimp. The square knot is made by taking the end and 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 woven over the first strand and under the second strand.[3][4]
A double square knot (or triple) can be made using four strings, thus doubling the size of the keychain made. Again the process is done by weaving the ends alternately. Many think the easiest way to create a square knot is taking 2 strands of the same color and weaving the other two strands through them.
"Barrel" can be done 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 creation to be cylindrical, resulting in colors that spiral instead of creating straight lines of color.[5]
The square knot uses four strands (resulting from the two ends of each of two scoubidou). Other numbers of strands may be used for the simple woven scoubidou chain, although with more than six the structure becomes difficult to support. Using even numbers of strands allows one end of the construction to be neatly terminated in the middle of a strand (as in the example of the square knot).
As with the square knot, each layer may be constructed either with the same direction of weave (leading to a chiral spiral structure) or as a mirror image of the previous layer (leading to a more angular appearance).
The double spiral, or twist, is the same concept as the spiral knot however the number of strings is doubled. The procedure is the same, however, the level of difficulty is higher and starting the double spiral is a little harder to handle.
The Cobra (or macrame) involves tying three strands around two other strands back and forth.[6][7] A super cobra (or king cobra) is created when the strands are tied around the cobra itself, making it wider and larger.[8]
This involves tying one strand around one or more strands. The more strands that are used in the middle the fatter staircase is.[9]
This involves putting one loop strand through another and then pulling the latter loop. The loops are then twisted together to look like a butterfly.[10]