Primitive Sandals Made of Bark and Yucca

Walking around barefoot in the summer is good fun until you bust up your foot or get a thorn or splinter in there. It’s not hard to whip something up if you have access to the right materials.
The bark being used in this video is a type of maple. I haven’t quite narrowed it down to the exact species yet, but the leaves pretty much give it away. I happened upon this quite by accident. I’ve been trying trees here-and-there for their bark in this part of Europe where I am currently located. I found nothing quite like the Atlantic white cedar that I was used to in South New Jersey. That is, until one day I felt the urge to pull over all of the sudden and scrape some bark off some random sapling by the roadside. The bark not only came off easily, but it also resisted tearing when creased: the hallmark of good weaving materials.
The idea for the design came from a video I saw on TH-cam a while back. A Native American lady named Mary Weahkee made them from a type of yucca that grows in the American South West. The style is called Mogollon. (See that video here: • Mary Weahkee makes Mog... ) This plant is supposed to be tough. I did not have access to anything like that (even though I did end up making the laces from your garden variety of yucca), so I ended up scouting for an alternative.
While I’m waiting for the strips of bark to soak in the creek, I am forging on some Japanese Knotweed shoots. They are an invasive species and are hard to get rid of. If you cut them, they will keep coming back. The upside of that is that you will fresh shoots to eat throughout the warmer months.