Hermitcraft: Four-Strand Shoelace Fudo

This is the second-easiest braid there is, and one of three I use to make hundred-year fudos. The flat four-strand shoelace braid is more versatile than the classic three-strand in that you can produce more distinctive patterns, given multiple colours and beginning positions.

Yet as simple as it is, I found no clear tutorials for this braid online. A few writers got close, but just had to make it complex at some point, calling for a change of hands mid-pass, or braiding behind the back, or standing up and turning three times clockwise every seventeen seconds. So I can't link to another blog for more information, because, amazingly, there ain't none. (Mark your calendars, brothers and sisters: today Rusty Ring scooped the Net.)

But this is easy, even for me, who can't follow a weaving or knot diagram for love or rice. Just follow these instructions, and know that if you just stared at the four strands long enough, you would invent this braid all by yourself. You're just straight-up, old-school, weaving the righthand strand over and under all the others. Over and over until you're done. So easy, some can't resist making it hard.

Observe:

1. Set up a standard three-strand fudo, with ring and knot and hook, but with four strands this time. I recommend strands of different colours the first time, to minimise confusion.

(Note: the "exploded" view in the following photos makes the process look more complex than it really is. If you look carefully, you'll see it's just as the text explains.)

2. Lay the four strands straight and even in front of you, as above.

3. Cross the inside left strand over the inside right strand.

4. Take the far right strand and weave it left, using basic, unfancy weaving: over the next strand, under the next, and over the last. [UPDATE: I forgot to add that it's bent around that final strand, which is not pictured; curl the weaving strand over and around the black strand, so that it finishes between the black strand and the orange one. This will leave the green weaving strand second from left.] "Over-under-over" [and around the last].

5. Tighten up this pass. (Not shown.)

6. Take the new far right strand and weave it left, too: over-under-over [and around the last].

7. Tighten up again.

8. Then take the new far right strand and weave it left: over-under-over [and around]. And then the new far right strand and weave it left: over-under-over [and around]. And so on, until you're ready to knot it off.

That's all. No juggling, no double-clutching, no moonwalking. It makes no difference whether you follow these instructions exactly, or invert them: cross the first two strands the other way, then pass the far right one under-over-under, instead of over-under-over. The important thing is the alternating pass.

To get diagonal stripes, like a traffic barricade (or the shoelace below), lay out your strands in two pairs, one colour left, the other right. Then do the crossing thing, and go for it.

You can play around with two, three, or four colours, in different sizes, textures, materials, and initial layouts, to get new patterns.

TO MAKE ACTUAL SHOELACES (see below), first whip the strands together at one end by tying poly kite string around them, again and again, until you've whipped a good half-inch. Seal it good with nail polish and cut off the strand-ends still sticking out. Then braid. When the lace is long enough, repeat the whipping procedure at the other end.

Four-strand fudos remind onlookers of the Four Noble Truths: that life is a disease; that the cause is known; that it's curable; and that the Eightfold Path is the cure. In practical terms, four-strand fudos look slightly more "deliberate", conveying greater intent and effort on the part of the maker, and so may be marginally less likely than the game old three-strander to be taken down by passersby.

Either way, it's a nice way to change things up.

WW: The barn on the Acres

(At the bottom of the hill on the land were I sat 100 Days on the Mountain.)

Arrogance Kyôsaku

"Practice is like candy. People like different kinds. But it's just candy. The Dharma is empty."

Hsu-tung

(Quoted in Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, by Bill Porter.)

WW: Tugboat in the passage

Reconciliation Koan

Loyalty, forgiveness, and reconciliation make me cry. Death and suffering and loss, these also touch me; I'm sensitive and I won't apologise for it. But people loving each other makes me cry.

I'm not sure why. Envy, maybe. But it feels more like elation.



(Photo of De verzoening van Jacob en Esau (Gen. 33), by Peter Paul Rubens, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Staatsgalerie im neuen Schloss Schleissheim.)

Hermitcraft: Dehydrated Beans

Click on photo for a closer look

There is no food as perfect as rice and beans. It's nutritious and filling (if the rice is brown), simple to make, endlessly variable, and cheap. Especially if you buy in bulk.

When I went into the woods last summer, I bought fifty pounds of each from a restaurant supply store. Total cost for 300 meals: around a hundred dollars Yank. Or 33 cents a-piece. (I only sat for a hundred days, but you want a cushion. No pun intended. Also, I ate zenola, a cereal invented for ango, for breakfast.)

Beans have one major drawback, however: they take forever to prepare. First they have to soak for hours, then simmer for an hour more until tender. It requires a lot of water, which is a labour-intensive resource in the forest, even where water is plentiful. This puts unprocessed beans out of reach of anyone living alone outdoors, especially if that person expects to do anything besides cook beans. (Such as travelling, meditating, bathing, sleeping...)

But dehydrated beans cook in the same amount of time and water as rice, which makes rice and beans a one-pot meal on the mountain.

I've found a fair amount of nonsense online about the relative impossibility of dehydrating beans, so for the benefit of all who need good food fast, here's the drill.

1. Procure beans. To determine what kind, I use a scientific formula: (all available beans) minus (all except the cheapest) equals (my beans). Where I am now, that leaves pinto beans. When I lived in Québec, I mostly ate Iroquois (white or navy) beans.

2. Cook as usual. (Soak in cold water overnight, drain, add new water to cover, and simmer gently until just tender but not mushy, 30 minutes to an hour, depending on bean and heat.)

3. Spread the cooked beans on a flat surface to dry. If you have a food

It takes weeks to dehydrate 50 pounds of beans

dehydrator, proceed as normal. If not, or you need more beans than the device can efficiently produce, place them outside. A baking sheet will work as a rack; a window screen propped up on something for airflow is better. Then subject them to sun and/or wind until dry. In a pinch you can also dry beans over a radiator or furnace register, near a woodstove, or in a warm oven with the door cracked. Unlike most foods, beans actually dry pretty well that way, but don't use a convection oven; the beans will come out beautifully uniform, but impossible to rehydrate.

4. The beans are dry when they resemble split baked potatoes, powder when pounded, and jingle when poured into a container. (Seriously. Check it out.) They'll take up about the same space as when raw, and be slightly lighter in weight. You can store them in anything, but something airtight is safest. For my 100 Days I poured most of them back into the large paper sack they came in and cached it in a garbage can in the barn. In spite of an interminably rainy summer, they kept just fine.

To reconstitute, put beans and about twice as much water in a pan, cover, and bring to a boil. Simmer for about ten minutes, or turn the heat off and let stand for twenty minutes or so. You can also pitch a handful in with rice, increase water accordingly, and cook as usual. Or use them in soup.

So not only is it possible to dehydrate beans, contrary to what some websites say, but they're actually one of the most effective foods to preserve that way. They keep well, rehydrate well, and eat well. Very well, when you're sitting under a piece of Tyvek in the jungle, and it's cold and pouring rain and you just by God need something to work.

And by the way: I'm still eating my surplus from last summer. And they're still just as good.

Drying by the stove fan

WW: Heaven on earth

(Lucky bastard.)