Progress

Well, after a few tries I got a long turks head tied, with much appreciation to D-Man's Long 2 bight turks head video. His YouTube handle (I guess thats what you call it) is dqmc07, and you can find his fine video collection here.
I tried tying one around a curvy water bottle: epic fail! I had much more luck on a dowel.

ebay Treasure

Are you feeling lucky?
Got a few bucks to spend?
Then check out this Civil War US Navy Sailors Ditty Bag

What happened to KHWW?

I jjust tried logging on the www.khww.net - Knot Heads World Wide - and find a banner "This Account has Been Suspended."
Let's hope it gets fixed soon. Anyone know what happened?

A few projects

A few things I am working on, and learning to do include:
   Long Turks Head
   Pineapple Knot
   Water Bottle Cover (the local store has aluminum water bottles on sale for $2, so I guess I could turn a little profit with them covered...)
   Bell Rope
 
I'm also planning (for about the third year in a row now) to make a knot board to enter in the local community fair in August.

Pliers lock

Here is a close-up of the lock I tied for my pliers - a jug sling knot finished with a two-strand lanyard knot. The loop makes it easy to hang up.

Pliers

A good way to begin practicing fancy knot work is to customize the tools you use.
Here is my pair of pliers - like I said previously, an inexpensive pair of Kobalt needle nose with SMOOTH jaws.
Since they are spring loaded, I first had to find a way to keep them closed for storage. My solution was to tie a jug sling knot in a piece of net twine. These directions for the jug sling knot are about the best I've seen. Once you learn it this way you will do it this way every time.
Then to finish it off I tied a two strand lanyard knot.
Over the last couple of days I added the turks heads on the handles.

A few thoughts on knottying

A kid with a violin walked up to an old man with a violin, in Times Square, and the young lad asked "Can you tell me the way to Carnegie Hall?"
"Practice, practice, practice," replied the old timer.
You hear the words "muscle memory" now and then and in knot tying that's what it is all about, especially in small stuff.
I don't know how many turks heads I tied, looking at a book, before I got the crossing bights down.
The first time I learned the bowline was in a Sunday School deal where the Reverend (M. Sargent Desmond) showed us the tree, the hole in the tree, the bunny coming out the hole, around the tree and back down the hole.
Splicing is the same way, practice, practice until passing the strands over and under become second nature.
Knottying is very relaxing, even when its frustrating. The beauty of it is, with a piece of line in your hand you can screw up over and over again, undoing and re-doing until finally you get it right and say to yourself, "I sure hope I can do THAT again!"
As you get older they say you need brain exercise, and joint exercise...and knottying gives you both!
The thing is, you start off simple, learn the basics, and pretty soon you amazing yourself at what you can do, and you find it is not difficult to master what appear to be VERY complex knots, just by following the directions that now make sense yo your eyes and your fingers.