Good Luck: Heptagonal
Behold the Heptagonal good luck knot. An alternate term for a seven sided figure is septagon, but in an effort to minimize confusion, let’s stick with “heptagon”.
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Good Luck: Octagonal
More of the similar. 8) Octagonal (8 sided) good luck knot. Again, as is traditional in Chinese knots, for an octagonal knot, the structural loops are overlapped 3 times. In this case you would be tying 3-over crowns. The corner versus side ears might start getting a bit confusing at this point. Remember that both sides of the side ear come out of a single point (the long ears here) and the corner ear wraps around other cords (the short ears here. But, of course, the ear length in your knot is entirely up to you).
Good Luck: Triangular
I’ve been thinking of the whole 3 sided versus three (knot type or 6-eared and 6 petals and whatnot. Something like 3-luck is certainly good for quick file naming and shorthand, but in descriptive text when trying to be clear and unambiguous, I’m thinking to use full-on mathematical (polygonal) terminology. Especially since, as demonstrated by the case of the good luck knots the number of ears does not necessarily properly describe a many-sided knot. So all those 4-sided good luck knots I’ve been talking about they’re all square even when they look round. sigh
But in any case, because pictures make a blog infinitely more interesting, here’s the triangular good luck knot. Nothing tricky here, just make a ‘Y’ shape with bights and crown it twice. Reverse direction for the second crown for a crisper shape.
Good Luck Basics
As you can tell from the logo over at The Chinese Knotting Homepage, the good luck knot is one of my favourites.
To the left here started out as an experiment with decorative rope making. I wanted to see if I could duplicate a braided look with twisted rope techniques. The rope side of things worked out (at least to my eyes) but then what to do with it? The good luck knot seemed like a good choice as there is minimal fiddling with the cord during construction for this decorative rope with unknown durability.
To help emphasize the structure of the various knots, to accompany the monochrome example knot, I'm tying versions that are half rainbow and half black. The rainbow colours provide both contrast to the black and an indication of where along the length of the cord being used to tie the knot the various elements of the knot might be.
Similarly for the last knot on the left, a basic black knot is doubled with a rainbow cord.
Terminology
The good luck knot is different from most of the other knots with multiple ears in that there are double the number of ears than the size number of the knot would indicate. The 4-knots here on this page have 8 ears each. 4 short and 4 long. But, of course, ear size is subject to the whims of the knot tyer so basing terminology on that would be foolish. However, notice that what is traditionally the "long" ear comes out of the side of the knot and the "short" ear wraps around the corner of the knot. So, there you have some terminology to deal with the good luck family of knots.
Good Luck Basics
As you can tell from the logo over at The Chinese Knotting Homepage, the good luck knot is one of my favourites.
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