Knotty Notions

This was the last letter completed (although I am still fiddling with the letter 'O') because I knew I wanted to use inspiration from John Hensel's Book of Ornamental Knots but misplaced it a for good long while (sadly there seems to be distinct theme there). Using one of the epaulet type knots (will look up and correct later) for the crossbar merged with the infinitely extensible prolong knot for the stem, it ended up looking pretty much as envisaged. It felt quite like mathematical knotwork when pulling and stretching the cord during stem construction.

Moving through the rainbow in a predictable Western sort of way (almost google-ish? 8) the letter 'N' is orange. I wanted each knot to be from a different knot family as well, and for the nicely straight parts of the 'N', the plafond seemed like a good choice. For the corners, something with more built in flexibility would be needed. When I look at the centre of the plafond knot, what I see is the centre of the sauvastika knot. Perhaps this follows logically from the fact that both are built out of interlinked simple overhand knots, but maybe not.

I meant to start last year with this series of knots, but I lost them in the fall move. Being one of those people, I stewed and searched instead of just retying them until late 2009. Of course, when I had retied 1.5 letters I then found the originals. Like wearing a rain coat to ensure that it won't rain that day, I should have started retying sooner. 8)

In any case, we start with a 'K'. Clever people like you can probably guess why, but if not, all will be revealed shortly. The 'K' is tied with a series of square flower knots with a hexagonal flower knot in the middle. I initially thought I might need to tie a heptagonal or octagonal flower for the centre to get the branches of the letter at the correct angle, but a test with a hexagonal centre proved to be close enough to perfect for the job.

So, I had this scrap of wire in my wire working box (cutters, pliers, cup burs, etc) and it was... 20cm long or so. What had I originally cut it for? What had I cut it off of? Dunno, but is it long enough to do anything with? Often when I've got some cord scrap in my hands they will do what they so frequently do: flower knots, button knots, double connection, double coin, etc. So, this little bit of wire, could I tie a flower knot in it with some beads? How would it look with such a small gauge of wire?

As a general rule, to a certain extent to duplicate the fibre knots I tie, I try to tie wire knots in higher gauges. Almost cord sized wire (I've got some wire that is close to 3mm in diameter. Expensive though and I'm expecting it to be brutally difficult to work. Someday...) is kind of self-explanatory. Smaller gauges though (I think it's 24ga)... let's see!

So, I'm going to the Bay area for Xmas this year and I was thinking: what do I want to do when I go there. Y'know other than shop. 8) And what I thought is that I'd really like to take one of Marion's workshops. Sure, I could probably experiment and figure out how to do the beaded edging on the donuts or how to get the lovely smoothly aligned yarns on her braids, but why should I? 8)

Marion is an artist who does beautiful fibre art jewelry, much of which is based on kumihimo, Chinese knotting and micromacrame. Also, wonderfully, she is unafraid to share her techniques through teaching. Originally from Switzerland, she now lives in the San Francisco area and does Asian fibre arts. What's not to love? 8)

I had just finished going through a big stack of videos that I had found on youku, a youTube-like site in China (search for Chinese knotting:中国结 and knotting art:结艺) when my knot (매듭 in Korean) search brought me a practical knot result. That's ok. I've got nothing against practical things and it's not like that automated search turns up many results in general, but it got me to thinking, how to refine this search to produce a more focused decorative result? Taking another look at Kim Hee-Jin's maedup site and Korean Traditional Knots and started parsing down this string "한국의 전통매듭" which as a string translates to "Korea's traditional knot". Previously, I had determined that "매듭" means "knot" so that left the "전통" part. Traditional, eh?

"한국의" translates as "South Korea" and "국의" translates as "country". I should not have been surprised that none of the individual parts translated as "south" which is apparently "남쪽". 8)

The forget me knot ring is a rope-like ring topped with a bow knot. Available in silver or brass. (via)
http://fredflare.com/customer/product.php?productid=3367&cat=283&bf=hs#

A "sailor's knot" bracelet in New England (New Haven, Conneticut).
http://newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=13433

Beady Mum of Singapore makes a beaded Chinese knot necklace.
http://artybeadsmum.blogspot.com/2009/06/chinese-knot-necklace.html

Swimsuits with Chinese knot details from figleaves. (via
http://www.figleaves.com/uk/product.asp?product_id=FIG-097115&src=trddpu...

The Playground Bracelet is a combination of glass disc beads and knotted rattail.
http://www.interweavestore.com/store/p/3278-Playground-Bracelet.aspx?a=B...

This is a very long post, don't miss the video at the bottom!

eBay seller ryujapan-99 sells kimono and components (obi, kumihimo, fabric, etc). At one point the above lot of obi jime was up for auction and sadly I did not win. I wanted a closer look at that green obijime. I'm thinking that it's not actually kumihimo, but maybe a phoenix tail sinnet. Can you tell from looking? Let me know what you think!

See swathes of kumihimo in their signature showcase as part of samurai armour and armament at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, California. Exhibiting through September 20, 2009. (via)