Now, each cord you use will have different characterisics unique to that type, and the shoelaces I use for my examples are no where near as slippery as most decorative cord choices, so I had to try this knot again in a more standard cord selection, in this case 3mm nylon satin cord. For a button, I would definitely want to use nylon or polyester over rayon as they are much more durable materials, able to deal with constant handling, wear and tear much more gracefully than rayon. Even so, nylon satin cord is far more slippery than the shoelace, and in order to get proper tension on the centre, pretty much all the slack had to be pulled out of the ears, although strangely enough as can be seen in the pictures, one ear was more stable than the others. Of course, if you tightened carefully and then reinforced the centre structure with thread, you could have larger ears if you wanted to.

To better illustrate the midpoint I redid this knot with one of my fused cords. These cords that I often use to tie example knots are actually shoelaces, sold locally as “oval shoelaces”. They look like president’s cord with the edge parts in a contrasting colour. I would love to find some real president’s cord in these designs as (a) shoelaces are a very expensive way to get string and (b) shoelaces are meant for dragging through the muck and aren’t exactly woven in a very refined way, so (c) real president’s cord takes the curves better and would probably have made a fine double coin example.

Since the double coin didn’t like being tied in president’s cord it seemed best to use regular satin cord and, for colour contrast, outline in black.

Interrupting our ongoing discourse on good luck knots, I’m going back to basics with an illustration of terms used to describe various cord parts and configurations.