Sunday, April 27, 2008

Flashback to childhood




Anyone remember the Cats Cradle game that involved string and hand movements?

We were discussing our childhoods at work the other night and somehow it led to us remembering this game. I have no idea how or what reminded us of it but it was such a good conversation. A lot of laughter going on. I found some articles about it online. Basically this is how it is played:

The game begins with the first player wrapping a loop of string around the fingers or wrists and taking one side of the string and circling the hands again. Then this player performs the last two moves of Opening A: taking the string which runs on the inside of the left arm onto the first finger of their right hand, then, reaching through the triangle created, the loop on the inside of the right hand is taken onto the first finger of the left hand.The aim of the game is to make the cat's cradle. This is created by two sets of crossed string between both hands. A second player grasps each cross horizontally using the thumb and first fingers, pulls these outwards, down under the line which runs below the crosses from the first players wrists, and back up. The first player lets go of the figure and the second player stretches it open by bringing apart the thumbs and fingers. This figure is the "diamonds". A series of other alterations produce more figures, some of which lead back to the diamonds while some are dead ends and cannot be transformed.This game is very simple and is always started with the above opening. After that one mostly pinches the x's and wrap them around the outside strings.

(Hope that makes sense.) Good Old times...

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