Pots, mop buckets, even babies: Anything can be a curling stone if you get creative

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Dig out your squidgy mop, a few pots and pans — or a robotic vacuum if you have one — and a pair of slippers.

It's curling time!

Social media has been ablaze with people deploying common household wares to mimic what the world's top curlers are doing at the Winter Olympics.

''Every four years, it blows up,'' American curler Tara Peterson said. ''Everyone's like, ‘We want to do it,' and then, yes, they get creative with things, so it's awesome.''

Creative is perhaps an understatement. In one video, two jacketed adults push a baby in a car seat across the ice, chest-bumping in glee. In another, popular Swedish comedian Mans Moller dons a wig a la Isabella Wrana, the Swedish mixed doubles champion, and slides pans into other pans, screaming ''CUUUURL!'' (Bonus points: He's outside, like the olden days of curling.)

Then there are the Italian nonnas in the country's southern Puglia region pushing a silver pot along a stony courtyard, sweeping with broomsticks. Or the hair salon in the Swedish city of Sundsvall, where a stylist hurls hair products toward her colleague. She screams ''Curl!'' and looks frustrated when the colleague approaches with a — wait for it — curling iron.

Despite such valiant attempts by the public, curlers say you really do need some specialized equipment to do the sport properly (along with a sheet of pebbled ice).

You can't use your normal sneakers to go curling. You'll just slip a lot on the ice. Instead, you'll need specialist curling shoes that have grips either built into the soles or those that can be strapped on.

Costs vary but Swedish curler Johanna Heldin said you can pay up to around $700 for them.

Styles vary, too. While most curlers at the Olympics are wearing plain black curling shoes, some have a more casual look — like Taylor Anderson-Heide of the United States, who has donned white, sneaker-style shoes in Cortina.

Sweeping left, sweeping right

Despite sharing the same name, curling brooms and cleaning brooms are very different.

Broom lightness directly correlates to a curler's control over a stone's speed and trajectory. The lighter the broom, the quicker the sweep and the faster the melting of ice pebbles that make up a curling sheet.

In fact, sweeping technology has actually grown so advanced that certain models have been banned from competition. That's what led to the ''Broomgate'' scandal, which rocked the curling world beginning in 2015.

Curlers began debuting high-tech brooms that gave sweepers so much control over the stone that the skill of the thrower failed to matter. Those kinds of brooms were then barred from competition by World Curling, which now maintains strict parameters on what kinds of brooms are allowed.

Rock ‘n' roll

The homegrown curling seen on social media makes one thing clear: To the public, anything can be a curling stone.

If you want Olympic-level material, you'll have to look to the uninhabited isle of Ailsa Cragi, located 10 miles (16 kilometers) off the coast of Scotland.

All the stones at these Games are made of the super-dense granite from that isle, manufactured by Kays Curling.

The company has a history with the Olympics dating back to the first winter edition in 1924 in Chamonix, France. The curling competition then was long thought to have been an exhibition event but eventually was confirmed as official. The company has continued to make stones for the Games since curling returned as a medal sport in Nagano 1998.

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