I think I got this advertisement from the knot tyers mailing list. The photography is lovely and the knots are nicely rendered. Click through for the complete ad with more knots. It’s interesting that the ad is supposed to be for Ford’s bluetooth (now standard with every new Ford, at least in Germany) but the wires used are distinctly Apple/iPod. Standard/generic wires would have been black, possibly with bright coloured ear buds (or not) and taken on a white background would probably have been just as dramatic. But maybe it’s just my personal biases that makes the ad, at first glance, seem more like an Apple ad than a Ford ad.

Over a year ago I scanned the pictures I needed to put together an illustrated step by step set of instructions for the good luck knot. Finally, words have been combined with the pictures and posted to the main site. Up until now there has been no main page for the good luck family of knots. Now I’ve sketched in the basic shape of it. There’s a lot more work to be done, but I think it’s useful and viewable now, so I’m putting it out there.

Let me know what you think: typos and errors, things that are unclear, things that you like, etc.

Knot in Korean (romanized), maedup or maedeup. Po-tae-toe po-tah-toe or more accurately Beijing vs Peking. I first saw it as maedup and still see it as that from time to time, it’s shorter, I like short. Brevity is good. When I’m copying something down and it’s written as maedeup, I’ll copy it that way though. So, no consistency. Sorry.

Carol James went to Korea for a couple of weeks and took an intensive course on maedup (매듭) at Dong Lim Knot Museum. Luckily for us, to help herself remember, she’s posted a number of videos to her YouTube channel.

My entertainment reading of choice is science fiction, fantasy, myths, legends, the occasional light horror if written by a favourite author, that sort of thing. As a general rule I stay out of the romance, mystery, fiction and literature areas of bookstores. I will often be found on the children/youth sections looking for books for the kids as well as myself (I have a particular soft spot for remixed fairy tales). Where knots intersect with fantastic fiction, well, it’s a happy place for me.