Berlin is a bicycle city and over time you can go through dozens of bicycle innertubes. Most just throw them away after buying new ones. I save mine and collect any that I can find. I had no idea of what to do with them but the idea of throwing away good rubber bothered me.

Then I got the idea of using old tubes to hold down plastic tarps on some things in the yard. Trouble was the tubes were too short and not versatile enough in their original form. So I got the idea of weaving them and braiding them into longer more useful lengths. This instructable shows the basics of how to do that.

First thing you'll need is the patience of knitter and of course:

old inner tubes
sharp pair of scissors

Cut the inner tube into 1 centimeter strips. You can go thinner but the strength of the cord suffers and going thicker makes for hard finger work .

I sit and cut for awhile saving the strips in boxes to be used later. You're dealing with sharp things so I can't recommend watching TV or reading while cutting.

Step 1: Start Knotting

I call this braiding but it actually is knotting. Place a strip inside another and loop it back into the trailing end. Once done you'll get a knot. Pull it tight and grab another strip and continue until you get the length you want. Kind of hard to explain but I'll post a video of me doing this later.

Once you have the cords it's up to your imagination what you can do with them. I am posting another step that shows how I am using mine.