Added another new tag: braid gallery.

Here's the Google Reader page
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/13399843360271014998/label/brai...

Here's the feed
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F13399843360271014998%2Fl...

I keep resolving to scan and review my entire knotty (and braid-y) book library, but I've only done one or two so far for the blog. I have gotten started with scanning the book covers though. Note for linkers, those titles will change and the location of those image files will likely change as well as they get processed. Amassing images for the blog and main website has rarely been the problem, it's the writeups and translations that are most time consuming. It's clear that this lot are going to need significant translation and interpretation work. Also, what's up with 5 of them having the same ISBN? I thought every book is supposed to have a unique ISBN or what's the point?

A pentagonal stellar knot tied in red, white and blue in a tribute to the flag colours and stars. Since I wanted the colours to remain in the same order as they went around the knot, the ears could not nest as is usually desirable in a ribbon style multi-strand knot. Instead the colours cross as shown below. Knowing this would happen, I had planned to cut the ears when I started thinking of the design. Once cut, it was both less and more than I expected as the cut ends were more chaotic than I was expecting, although down near the body of the knot the doubled colour alignment from the front and back layers was... well, I'm still trying to decide how much I like or dislike it. 8)

A maple leaf for Canada Day. What can I say, maybe next year I'll knot a beaver or a moose. 8)

New tags to from my Google Reader link dumpingness:

How to braid
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/13399843360271014998/label/how%...
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F13399843360271014998%2Fl...

Mizuhiki
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/13399843360271014998/label/mizu...
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F13399843360271014998%2Fl...

where to learn
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/13399843360271014998/label/wher...
http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F13399843360271014998%2Fl...

or track them all from the Link Dump aggregator found through the menu option to the left.

I've added a new tag for Knots in the News:

Here's the shared page from Google and the RSS feed plus the local source page.

Enjoy. 8)

I was playing around with a variety of Google "products" and discovered a way to selectively share and annotate links for public viewing that doesn't expose you, my gentle Knotty Notion reader, to silly cat and dog pictures and such that I subject my friends to (or cause my friends to wade through endless knot and braid posts for my thoughts on the latest installment of mad scientist cartoons).

And so, in the menu to the left, you will now see "Link Dump" which takes information directly from my newsfeed reader (Google Reader) as I flag and tag. This will allow me to quickly process, then share and comment on items of knotty (and braid-y) interest in a much less labour intensive way than my traditional cut/paste/post method. Special gems/information rich finds will still be singled out for more detailed commentary and deliberate posts.

Using the Korean keyboard on my iPhone (much nicer than anything I could quickly find online for free), I am able to type the name of the knot I found, and the name of the book I found it in. Let's start with the knot: 당초매듭 (dang-cho-mae-deup) which machine translates as "initially the knot" or "initial knot" a translation that lacks both poetry and, I suspect, gist. But, searching with "당초매듭" finds us this web page: http://blog.daum.net/_blog/BlogView.do?blogid=0BoQ2&articleno=7147932&ca...
which, after I turned off a few security settings, shows us... a creeper knot! Jackpot!

So, back to the book:
in wee little type over the title: 우아한 전통의 (u-a-han jeon-tong-ui)
in big type: 한국애듭 (han-gu-gae-deup)
in teeny tiny type under the title: 김주현 편저 (gim-ju-hyeon pyeon-jeo)

Which Google Translates as: Korea's traditional and elegant knot / endeavor to eds.

Breaking it down, "우아한 전통의" is "elegant traditional", indeed "우아한" == "elegant" and "전통의" == "traditional". "한국" == "(South) Korea" and "애듭" == "knot".

So, I was looking through my Japanese and Korean books looking for creeper and double coin references and came across what looks like a creeper reference in "한국매듭" which I'll blog more about when I figure out how to type Korean (or I could do what I did to get this book title onto the computer which is look at a page of related text and pick out characters to cut and paste together). Then I had a look at my copy of Elegant Knotted Jewelry by Becky Meverden and there were double coin knots and romanized Korean: "nalgae". Sounded plausible. Sounded familiar...

Finished adding text to the scanned step-by-step images for the creeper knot. A relatively lonely knot in the Chinese knotting pantheon, it seems to have been not embraced by Japanese or Korean artisans (I have found no mentions and hence no translations). Even Ashley has no mention of it although I did find an extension, the caterpillar knot.