My parents got me a set of snowshoes to build for Christmas. These are the wood and rawhide (neoprene these days) kind made by a family in the U.P. and distributed across the U.S. (and probably at least Canada if not elsewhere, eh). Jackson is a huge fan of snowshoeing, or at least the fact that I walk him in the deep snow (he couldn't care less what is on my feet as long as I trudge through knee deep snow with him). They weren't easy to make. There were a lot of...phases...to the process. Here's how it went.
Day 0: Cool! I can't wait to start. Jackson will love snowshoeing!
Day 1: What were my parents thinking?! This doesn't make any sense! What idiot wrote these instructions. I'm pretty sure my visualization skills are above average but these pictures don't make sense. "Tie a Lark's Knot." Gee, I would if I knew what that was. These guys might make good snowshoes, but their written communication skills are terrible.
Day 1.5: I'm glad my parents could explain a little, it's not too bad now. I would have been completely lost if they hadn't added their supplemental instructions to the packet. By packet I mean, the three useless pages that came with the snowshoes.
Day 2: I got the middle of both shoes done, not bad. My fingers hurt and I'm bleeding all over the neoprene from one of the cuts on my hands. Time for a little break. I might actually write real direction, copy write them, and sell them to the Iverson's. These guys are horrible at instructions!
Day 2.5: What does that even mean? "Just weave." That's all the directions I get for the heel and toe?! Not even a picture showing what "weave" means? My parents weren't a ton of help either since this is different from my dad's set. At least they agreed that my guessing interpretation was logical. "Just weave," seriously...if I ever meet these Iverson people I'm going to offer some constructive criticism...hopefully I'll be more polite about it than I feel right now.
Day 2.75: Make it "as tight as possible" huh? It would have been nice to know I would be threading something between those two surfaces later. I actually made it too tight. How could one person possibly do this? It takes all of Ben's strength AND me heaving with all my body weight to thread it through only moving a foot at a time. Oh, and now I found a mistake so I have to undo that part and start the toe over! Ahhhh!!! I wouldn't give this gift to an enemy.
Day 3: I'm still frustrated I need to undo and redo those two impossible spots on the toe. I need another day before I deal with unlacing the stupid toe.
Day 4: My fingers are no longer red, but the tips are still sore and swollen so I'm going to wait another day. Besides the cuts on my hands could use another day.
Day 7: Ben broke out his tools for re-lacing baseball gloves. The neoprene was so tight we bent one, but it was still a huge help. One toe down...yay! The heel is even easier now that I get what "just weave" means. I got the toe wrapped...nice. Wrapped the heel...ah, crap! I stopped over an inch early and now it's lopsided. Sure it won't affect the function, but it's going to bug me forever! Who buys something like this for someone? I bet it's all sorts of fun at a brewery with an instructor to help. All I have is pictures and crappy directions. And crappy beer, stupid Sam's Winter Lager...Ben got the last Octoberfest yesterday so now I'm stuck pretending this is a good substitute.
Day 8: Got the other heel done. It isn't any easier, but it's a little less frustrating with Ben's awesome tool. I have way more than enough neoprene for the last toe so I'm just going to cut my mistake out of the original toes instead of unstringing it. Yeah, it's that hard and so not worth another cut on my hand. Got the last toe done...I can't wait until this is over.
Day 8.25: Wrapped both the heel and toe on the second one. I might have enough to redo the other heel. If I don't have enough it's going to suck to redo for no reason though. This SUCKS!!
Day 8.5: Haha! There was enough! It was worth it and now I don't have a lopsided wrap to look at the rest of my life. That's right the rest of my life, I'll never get rid of these snowshoes...and I'll NEVER make my own snowshoes again. I just need to put the harnesses on.
Day 8.75: Of course. The Iverson's didn't feel the need to put instructions on the harness. They pretty much didn't give any instructions on the rest of the snowshoe, why start now? I can't make any sense of the harnesses either. I can't tell what strap goes to what buckle or what part of the foot each strap goes around. Dad wasn't much help since he somehow ended up with a different harness than me. I somehow figured it out from hearing how his worked though.
Day 8.9: Finally! They're done! Now it's time to take Jackson with me on a test run.
The final product.
My harness (so my Dad can see why I was so confused when he was describing his).
So now that it's over it is kind of cool to have a pair of snowshoes I made. Although I had my moments of doubt along the way, I really do appreciate the gift now that I'm done. And I appreciate the actual snowshoes more than a straight purchased pair after the blood and silent profanity. They worked great, and like I mentioned at the beginning Jackson is a big fan of the activity. He goes a few clicks faster than I would choose to go on my own, but he keeps it exciting.
