Play-practice: fun with science!

I think one of my obstacles is that a general lack of tying opportunity means that every time I tie, I both want to practice and to play, and to practice playing. Balancing my competing needs as a rope top sometimes proves challenging, as I end up planning scenes based on something I want to practice or try out, with varying levels of success. 

On Sunday night, it was Shut Up and Tie, the local rope-centric play night. It tends to be a quiet night at the best of times, but it was really slow this week, due to everyone being at DomCon. Fortunately, M and A were there, so I asked A if he wanted to tie. 

While they tied, I did some self-tying, as this is the one party where I can do so. I tried Kinoko's hip harness on myself. Possibly I loaded it incorrectly, or didn't compact the frictions enough, but the lines from the center to the legs shifted in a fairly alarming way, threatening to tighten on the thighs. Clearly more work is needed, 

After this, I tried a Naka-style hip/thigh mermaid tie, with moderate success. It needs careful loading, and I don't think it would be a favorite for self-tying, as it really limits what I can do. But I want to try it with a chest harness so I can work on torsions. 

While self-tying and coiling afterward, I debated a few ties I might try with A, going back and forth between something simpler, like a yoko tsuri, or working on one of Kinoko's ties and a transition. I finally decided to try Kinoko's pinwheel tie transitioning into a yoko tsuri, all kept close to the ground so we could play more. 

Overall, it went pretty well. The two of us always have fun, an enjoyable combination of sexy rope and silliness that always leaves me smiling. The pinwheel suspension went okay, but the transition didn't quite go the way I hoped, as I didn't properly adjust the attachment to shift him from facedown to side, but the concept behind was solid, he said later, so I'm pretty happy about that. One I get him down from the mess I'd made of that, we kept playing in the partial. As I untied, he tried to kick the rope off his ankles, prompting me to throw my tangled rope back on him with a cry of, "SUBMIT TO MY ROPE! ACCEPT IT!"

(As it says on the Devil Mask shirt, "Way More Seriouser Than You.")

This ended up being a pretty successful combination of practice and play: I had fun, tried something, and learned how it might work better. 

There's another play party this Friday, so I'm going to try to set up some scenes for that. In the meantime, try to get a rigger study done this week and try to figure out where I went wrong on the Kinoko harness.