Over a year ago I scanned the pictures I needed to put together an illustrated step by step set of instructions for the good luck knot. Finally, words have been combined with the pictures and posted to the main site. Up until now there has been no main page for the good luck family of knots. Now I've sketched in the basic shape of it. There's a lot more work to be done, but I think it's useful and viewable now, so I'm putting it out there.

Let me know what you think: typos and errors, things that are unclear, things that you like, etc.

So, I had this image in my mind of an abstract-ish rabbit with a nice triangular face and long ears. So I tied a triangular good luck knot with inset ears. Holding it in my hand it looked fine, but when let go and put down, the ears don't point up and the whole rabbit effect is lessened greatly.

I have a few other ideas for better rabbits including using globe knots, but what am I going to do in later years if I use all of my ideas right away, eh? 8)

So, this one is not what I would term a success. Live, experiment (preferably non-destructively) and learn.

If I try this particular idea again it might be a good idea to use a pentagonal or hexagonal base in order to position ears that point up, snug up the extra loops to hide them or provide shaping. Maybe even whiskers.

What with all the good luck knot stuff I've been doing, it's time to fix up the main page and do a how-to or 2 or... But that sort of thing takes time. All the first round of pictures are scanned and need to be processed, text added, etc. See the files as they are worked on. When the pages are complete, they will replace the directory listings. This is a peek under the hood.

Last but not least is the nonagonal good luck knot. More accurately Greek vs Latin, the term enneagonon is more "correct", but nonagon is the more popular and commonly used term. Plus there's this whole ennegram/enneagram personality thing to confuse matters. Best to stick with nonagon, am I right?!? 8)

Behold the Heptagonal good luck knot. An alternate term for a seven sided figure is septagon, but in an effort to minimize confusion, let's stick with "heptagon".

As I was posting 3, 6, and 8 I felt a twinge of discomfort. Was it OCD? Anal retentiveness? Whatever it was, it is surely related to completism and the collector's instinct. I wasn't going to be happy unless I filled in the blanks.

Here's the first. A pentagonal good luck knot, done with two over 2 crown knots.

More of the similar. 8) Octagonal (8 sided) good luck knot. Again, as is traditional in Chinese knots, for an octagonal knot, the structural loops are overlapped 3 times. In this case you would be tying 3-over crowns. The corner versus side ears might start getting a bit confusing at this point. Remember that both sides of the side ear come out of a single point (the long ears here) and the corner ear wraps around other cords (the short ears here. But, of course, the ear length in your knot is entirely up to you).

The hexagonal (6-sided) good luck knot. The same knot as my 2008 Xmas ornament. Take your cord and make a 6-pointed star shape with the bights (with the free ends being the 6^th point) and do two 2-over crown (overlap 2 arms rather than 1) for a nice tight centre. Depending on your cord (or wire or whatever), you are unlikely to want to tie a regular (1-over) as the structure would be too loose. But try it yourself and see for the experience. 8)

This particular instance is analogous to the rotated square good luck variant as the ends are coming out of corner ears versus side ears.

I've been thinking of the whole 3 sided versus three (knot type or 6-eared and 6 petals and whatnot. Something like 3-luck is certainly good for quick file naming and shorthand, but in descriptive text when trying to be clear and unambiguous, I'm thinking to use full-on mathematical (polygonal) terminology. Especially since, as demonstrated by the case of the good luck knots the number of ears does not necessarily properly describe a many-sided knot. So all those 4-sided good luck knots I've been talking about they're all square even when they look round. *sigh*

If you take your 4 sided good luck reverse corner crown variant and instead of crowning first in the counter clockwise direction (this one started with crowning in the clockwise direction) then flip it over, and crown the corner loops (clockwise in this case). The result is symmetric with the front and back looking the same. Of course, substantially the same result can be obtained by crowning in the counter clockwise direction both times instead.

This is a variant, not in the book (and arrived at by accident), but I think worthy and aesthetically pleasing.

Books mentioned in this post: