As mentioned in my review of the globe knot book, my bead group wanted to learn some globe knots so I picked 18JBD for it's relative simplicity (facet number) and snazzy appearance. Of course, in order to follow the instructions from the book, one is going to need a tool. Since buying the official tool just to try one knot seems little excessive, I came up with a makeshift tool that should cost pennies to construct.

Start with 2 pair of disposable chopsticks. Unwrap. That's it. Don't separate them (we're not eating with these ones, after all).

The offspring asked for a pink knot. Here is one. This is a globe knot with 14 facets. 14SGZ to be precise. Generally speaking, the more facets, the more I like it, but that's not how you start people off. I actually timed myself this time. From start to where I'm reasonably happy to leave it alone is approximately 40 minutes. The slight football shape to the core bead is bugging me. The next core bead will be more round if I can find one without too much digging.

Don Burrhus has written (at this point) 3 books and sells kits to go with them. Two are about Turks Head Knots and the most recent is about globe knots. I have all of them, but I'll tackle the Turks Head kit and books more thoroughly at a later date.

This is a piece intended to be a page on The Chinese Knotting Homepage that I wrote back in 2006, but never posted. Maybe I'll turn around and post it there right after I post it here. Maybe I'll wait a few more years. Who knows? 8)

One of the aspects of Chinese Knotting that I find most enjoyable is that it is so portable and requires few tools. This is not to say that there are no tools appropriate to the art or that there are no tools to make certain tasks easier (never fear, tool junkies!!), only that the basic kit is fairly small.

Tying knots in wire is a lot like tying knots in cord in higher gauges. That is to say when the wire is thin, it handles somewhat like cord.