Poly in Pictures

GUYS. Look! The laces that I bought with my spending money arrived!

Each lace is 334cm long, and my boots have 12 pairs of holes and they seem to be just the right length.

I said that I would lace these boots corset-style, and I have. I’m going to show you how it went, but my photos and tutorialness are probably so bad that you might want to instead follow something like this. The important bit is that the bunny ears are at the cornery bend where your leg meets the top of your foot.

THE BOOTS OF GLORY

In case anyone is wondering, these are Doc Martens, Triumph 1914. See the silliness of the laces! One of the aglets even fell off during this tutorial. Pah.

I took out the old laces and flung them derisively to one side. Then I tied a little knot in the middle of the new laces, because they are very long and could do with a centre marker.

Perhaps it’s useful to note at this point that I started lacing these so that the little permanent knot where the ends of the laces are tied together would be at the bottom, as it would be on a corset. Anyway, so what you do is this:

Go outside-to-outside with the holes, then inside-to-inside, when you cross over. At the ankle-corner, go straight back in on the same side, leaving a loop, which Hannah tells me is a “bunny ear”. Do the same on the other side, so it’s all symmetrical. Notice that the crosses alternate between under and over.

Then tie your laces together at the very end, close to the aglets, as above. Below, you can see how you’re supposed to loosen the laces so that the crosses are all tighter and the bunny ears are long and ridiculous:

And then tie the bunny ears…

See the difference:

The old one looks a bit pants, no? But the little knot at the bottom was bugging me. So I relaced it exactly the same, but with the ends of the laces at the top: *

To tighten/loosen:

Picture the scene. Your boots have baggy laces, and your foot can get in; hurrah! Start at the bottom. The first cross on the top, pull it tight. Then the second top-cross from the bottom. Then pull the slack into the bunny ears. Next, do the same from the top down: starting with the top top-cross, tighten, pull the slack into the next one down, and so on until you get to the bunny ears. Then tie the bunny ears into a knot. To use another animal analogy, it will probably look like a loopy insect at a pride festival.

To loosen/escape from your boots, do the same but in reverse. Start by undoing the bow. Pull some of the slack from your bunny ears into the top-cross just above it, and then pull a bit of that slack into the next cross up, etc. all the way to the top. Do the same working down: pull some of the bunny-ear-slack into the top-cross just below it, then some of that slack into the one below that. Pull the sides of your boot to loosen it more evenly, and then yank the boot and embrace your freedom with toe-wiggles.

*As illustrated, stomp your old laces into the ground, especially the one where the aglet fell off, and then go kick the crap out of some mountains.