Oh what a tangled web we weave when we try to listen to an .mp3 audio book recording of Bleak House

Okay, so that's not exactly true. I'm not currently listening to Bleak House (because I'm not suicidal, obviously), but I do have a phone-based job so I'm constantly in and out of headphones. Which leads to a lot of tangles, even when I carefully coil them and store them in a wide-mouth mason jar in a desk drawer. Suspiciously, I get the exact same number of tangles when I carelessly toss them into my purse full of approximately 28392837428374 store loyalty cards, tiny bottles of hand sanitizer, at least nine different tubes of lip gloss in various shades of nude, and A COMPLETELY REASONABLE AMOUNT of parmesan and crushed red pepper packets.

So when I saw this on Pinterest with a caption about how it would "stop earphones from tangling!!!", I was intrigued.

It links to an Apartment Therapy article that vaguely explains how to make them.  It seemed like a good opportunity to also personalize my ear phones so they aren't snagged by the kids (mistakenly or otherwise). My current system involved my precious label maker:

Cause I'm creative like that.

The only material you really need for this project is embroidery thread. Luckily I spent the vast majority of my teenage years cross stitching murals of wolves (I wish I was making this up), so I'm prepared for that.

From the time before label makers.

What is that labeled with? A sticker that says "Kimberly"? Of course. I've pretty much been exactly the same since I was 12 years old, but thankfully with less wolf-themed sewing projects these days. I actually recall buying that case for $0.20 when the K-Mart on Winchester went out of business. It was right across the street from the weird church with the Statue of Liberty now (it was Central Church then) which STRANGELY ENOUGH is in a roundabout what what brought me together with Neal. Thanks, creepy Memphis church people! My grandmother sent me the labels in a Christmas present. Thanks, Granny! 

The case has plenty of colors to choose from. Like, ALL of the colors.

I've been obsessed with blue and orange lately, but that's not girly enough to repel boys. I need enough "girl colors" to keep anyone from being willing to use my ear buds, so I settled on purple, magenta, coral, and blue. 

From there I decided to follow the suggestions from the original link and tape it down, but since I've found it MUCH easier to pin the whole thing to a pillow as I did making friendship bracelets as a kid. An aside - before Pinterest, before eHow, before the internet at all, I made friendship bracelets. I learned how from the back of a box of Fruity Pebbles cereal with thread they included inside. So I might have been eating solid sugar, but my sense of craftiness was being nourished at least!

So first you tape all that stuff down.

Then you pick the color you want to start with and make a 4. 

Then you pull the tail under the rest and through the hole.

Then you just slide the tail up to make a knot. This is the part my 9-year-old had trouble with, but if you do it enough, you'll get the hang of it. Which is good because you have to do it A LOT. iPhone cables are RIDICULOUSLY long. INSANELY. 

But eventually, hours and hours later, you'll get this:

Voila!

I glued the ends down with a bit of tacky glue just to tidy it up. The biggest problem with having ear buds this awesome is that all your kids will want some, too.