Trying something more complex

I was recently looking at the Knot Heads World Wide website and I saw a video about making a 5 lead, 3 bight turks head knot into 11 lead, 7 bight turks head knot. If you don't know what that means, suffice it to say it's bigger and more complicated looking.


I learned to make much simpler turks head knots (3 lead, 4 bight; 3 lead 5 bight) more than 35 years ago. In the last month, I stepped it up and have made some long 2 bight, 3 bight, and 4 bight turks head knots - mostly on carabiners. So this was quite a big step for me.


So I tried it out on my Pilot Dr. Grip Gel pen using beige 1.4mm braided nylon cord. This cord is a just bit smaller than 1/16" diameter and for a pen is a little bit thicker than I would like. Still, it does not make the pen uncomfortable to hold and it was a good exercise. Besides, now nobody is going to mistake my pen for theirs.

I tried it again using some 1/8" twisted cotton cord and it didn't turn out too bad.

Getting back in the habit

Hi folks,

Back when I was very young (and dinosaurs were becoming scarce) my dad introduced me to knots I had never seen and a wonderful book called The Ashley Book of Knots.

I learned a lot from that book and I made some things that nobody had ever seen before. But then I put it down for a long time. Another blogger, Stormdrane, inspired me to picked it back up again

Here's a picture of some coasters I made recently. They're in pink in honor of my step-mom's valient, if unsuccessful, eight year battle with cancer. In the Ashley book, it's knot #4355.