Knotty Notions - page 30 of 41

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.

So, I was thinking about making a knot anatomy illustration to follow up on the cord anatomy (to be followed sometime in the future with a tassel anatomy illustration). I certainly needed at least a polygonal knot of some kind and then a mat knot, maybe Lydia Chen’s creeper knot as well.

I was contemplating starting a blog over at the Kumihimo Home Page for this stuff, but it’s more effort to maintain more blogs and decorative braiding goes with decorative knotting like chocolate and ice cream, am I right? 8) 8) Plus in my mind’s eye when I was thinking of newsletter sections years ago I thought: knotty thoughts (knots), twisted thoughts (twisted and spun cords), and braided thoughts (braiding, but then maybe I had a more risqué term that I can’t think of right now. 8) In any case, I’ve put them in separate posts so one need not deal with the other if so desired.

Things to see and do
The Capital Museum in Beijing has 12 workshops every week, from Tuesday to Saturday, both in the morning and afternoon. Are the workshops just for local kids? Are they just for around New Years? Unknown at this time, but one of the things you can do is to learn how to “knitting Chinese knots,” among other Chinese handcrafts.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-02/09/content_7457982.htm