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Flor De Palo Borracho

Recently, I got a copy of Lenguajes y Juegos de Hilo en Gran Chaco for the library. Despite having very little Spanish, I managed to semi-translate the figure El Flor de Palo Borracho (Flower of the Floss Silk Tree1) originally from Juegos de hilo y trucos de los Toba-Taksék (p. 173). The original Spanish instructions are available here.

  1. Opening A.
  2. Transfer the index loop to the wrist by passing it over all the fingers and their loops.
  3. Using your mouth, approach the string figure from below and pick up the far little finger string near the center of the figure. This string will be tranverse and form the base of a small triangle. Return to normal position.
  4. Drop the little finger loops. The little fingers enter the mouth loop from above, near the teeth, and pick-up the mouth strings from above. Transfer the mouth loop to the little fingers and return to normal position.
  5. The mouth approaches the figure from above, enters in to the little finger loop, and picks up the near thumb string from the center of the figure.
  6. Release the thumb loops. The thumbs then enter the mouth loop from below, near the teeth. Transfer the mouth loop to the thumbs.
  7. Transfer the wrist loops to the index fingers, passing it them over all the other loops.
  8. Extend the figure using The Gate extension:
    1. Thumbs pass over all strings and pick up the near little finger string and return.
    2. Little fingers pass over all strings and pick up the far thumb string and return.
    3. Indices hold down the double string across the palm, and enter in to their own loop on the palmar side of this double string.
    4. Release the thumb and little fingers from their loops.
    5. The index, middle, ring, and little finger share the loop on the indices, and extend the figure. The thumbs enter this common loop and can lift the upper frame string a bit higher.

The last instruction reads: Se extiende cuidadosamente la figura (Extend the figure carefully.) I think that this is good advice. The figure doesn’t come out very well the first few times. Often, I need to reach in to the figure after extending and re-adjust its central crossings. I find that it helps to use a very slippery string.

Photo credits: Ceiba speciosa flower from Wikimedia user Peakhora. String figure by ISHINO Keiichiro via the string-figures mailing list. You can see Keiichiro’s version here (Japanese).

  1. Many thanks to Sabin Bally for correcting my translation of the title. Originally, I had “Flower of the Drunken Stick Plant”. It turns out that “Palo Borracho” is the local name of Ceiba speciosa. ↩︎

Published: Feb 12, 2025 @ 08:41.
Last Modified: Feb 28, 2025 @ 22:41.

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#string figure #translation

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