Ah! This page was on the front page of somethingawful a good ten years ago. At the time I had shoes with particularly slippery laces, so I started using Ian's Secure Knot, and never looked back: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
I think I've used this one as well for about 7 or 8 years. I can recall an accidental untie exactly once. It's also fantastic because it makes for a much more symmetric, shapely knot.
Oh interesting! I've used the Ian knot for about 10 years now and hadn't even considered looking for anything else.
Quite a lot of sailing has given me a good appreciation of knots. It's amazing how (when you're doing a lot of rope work) you can get a real instinctive sense of the pressures on a knot and how to create the best knot for the situation. In ocean racing there are places you have unusual needs (like tethering the running backstays to the cars while you adjust the angles).
Believe it or (k)not, there a branch of mathematical topology dedicated to knot theory.
I learned about, and kind of use a variant of, the secure knot from this site starting from a number of years ago. I find that I'm lazy and it's easier for me to loop one bunny ear twice over (asymmetrically) rather than both ears once each (symmetrically). Old habits means that I'm used to using my left hand to loop the ear and then my right hand to pull it taut.
So strange to see this here.. I spent a couple days reading the site a few years ago. It was during a time where I was looking for alternative ways to live my life and if I could have subtle improvements on everyday things.
I learned a few knots and even now when I buy a new pair of shoes I consult the site to see what lacing style would suit the shoe and my foot. (since different styles put different tension on the wearers foot).
I have to say, I'm happy it exists, it enriched my life in such a subtle way, this is the kind of content that the internet was made for in my opinion.
Have to recommend Blundstone boots. I was concerned that the elastic would wear out but it's been years and looks like it will outlast the tread. They are durable, grip well, waterproof easily, and dressy enough for semi-formal occasions. Warm enough for winter and cool enough for summer too!
I'll toss in my vote for Blundstone boots as well. Worth the price, they look nice and most importantly are comfortable. Easy to put on/take off as well.
As an alternative, Baxter boots[0] are also worth considering. I bought a pair of Gringos[1], as they were cheaper than Blundstones, and have been pretty happy with them.
If you really want the full dress boot option and are prepared to spend a lot, there's always RM Williams[2] of course. However, I've heard reports their quality has suffered in recent years. I have three pairs of Yearling Craftsman boots now between 15-25 years old. They've all been re-soled multiple times and the older ones are looking a bit worse for wear, but I've certainly had my money's worth out of them.
Bought my first pair 4 weeks ago. I recently relocated from Sydney (somewhat ironic) to NY. I found a recommendation on reddit and couldn't be happier.
Orthogonal to shoes and such, I find that I end up searching for recommendations for products on reddit as opposed to a store or review engine. I prefer to know what enthusiasts think rather than a bunch of randoms who have voted based on a star system.
Are there are sites that just list products and have only a single recommendation for each category? "This is _the_ boot to buy if you are looking for cold weather boots. It's a good combination of warm, waterproof and stylish." That's basically what I was after and exactly what reddit delivered after some searching through relevant subreddits.
Wirecutter has never steered me wrong. I'm not sure how many products I've bought based on their recommendations over the years (10? 15?) but every one has been excellent.
I can vouch for Wirecutter's audio equipment reviews in particular. I am a bit of an audio enthusiast, and they do quite well in this area. Their reviewers are well respected in the industry and they are, well, the total opposite of reviewers who recommend snake-oil crap like expensive speaker cables.
Using towels with loops attached (or adding the loops yourself).
For single sheets, you can cut along the sides of the left and right edge which allows you to put your hands through and pull the duvet into the sheet, super easy and makes swapping the sheets easy.
There was a whole bunch of stuff, it's all incorporated into my lifestyle now so picking it out is difficult.
I didn't realise this wasn't a thing everywhere until just now. In Sweden I never remember any sheet without them, but in the country I live in now they do not have the holes and it is a bit annoying.
You can still grab the sheet "through" the corners though.
I have started doing this too. These are more general than specific, but I think the biggest things for me are:
-Cleaning my entire apartment very thoroughly and keeping it that way. Makes me feel a lot better overall.
-Positive mental attitude always and trying not to stress about things as much. I am a very cynical person and I believe trying to think about things differently is important.
-Constantly analyzing what I am doing and thinking and asking people what I could have done differently, even if I don't see it as a failure there is always something to improve. The key is thinking objectively and not worrying about those mistakes, but keeping those things in mind in the future.
-Really pushing myself to do things out of my comfort zone every single day.
-Focus on making progress on something non-work related every single day.
- Appreciating constructive feedback as an opportunity to learn, not to become defensive
- Taking to heart how chance plays a large role on short term success but doing things right plays a large role for long term success (playing backgammon taught me lot about this).
- Exploring the unwritten rules of small talk and common courtesy.
None of these have come naturally to to me, nor have I fully mastered them. I see them all as processes, not goals.
Also:
- Having kids. An everyday crash course in many things.
Strange to read your post as well, since it kind of mirrors my experience. I stumbled upon his site about 4 months ago. Since then I've spent hours lacing and tying knots. There's something kind of zen about it. Now, when putting on my shoes, it's a small effect, but it's made every day just slightly more peaceful and complete. I've also gotten lots of questions and questions on my shoes since I found it. It's fun to talk about the site.
I believe the woman to whom you are referring is named "Marie Kondo".
The NYTimes wrote up a fairly lengthy article about her in July 2016, which I've been meaning to read: "Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff". [0]
He is featured prominently in David Rees' Going Deep episode about how to tie your shoelaces. That whole program is a gem, and people like this should be celebrated.
I'll vouch for the "Ian Knot". Throughout my life I had to double-tie the classic shoelace knot or else it would come loose a some point during the day. Then I tried the Ian Knot. It is significantly faster and easier. And, now I have some laced shoes that I just slip on because they stay tied for weeks instead of hours.
I concur. I'd always had problems with some tennis shoes with strings being short and thick, causing them to untie in the middle of a session. Has never been a problem since I learned that knot.
I tried the Ian Knot, found it fiddly to tie. I use a standard knot by force of habit or when I can't stand having unties, or the laces are long, I use a Surgeons Knot.
The Surgeons Knot is just a standard shoelace tie with 2 slight modifications - when you overlap the 2 sides of the lace you tuck the lace under twice. This, like a Timber Hitch, creates much more contact area and thus much more friction.
I have (not from that site) switched the way I tie a standard knot as I was doing grannies instead of reef-knots. This seems to have prevented unwanted unties.
vouch for the surgeons knot. watched the ted video for correctly tying shoe laces. surgeon knot was only one more loop. i have shoes with rounded laces that comes undone easily, this fixed the problem.
I used the Ian Knot for a while, but then went back to one of the standard methods.
The difficulty I had with the Ian Knot was when I wanted the laces to be tight. With the standard methods I was able to pull the laces tight, then keep the Starting Knot tight also as I tied the final loops. With the Ian Knot, it was hard to keep the Starting Knot tight whilst I tied the loops.
Last year, I learned Ian's Secure Knot[1]. It took under an hour of study and practice once, and my life was slightly improved every day from then on. Never had my laces come untied since then. Great ROI.
One thing that's worth noting about the classic bow shoelace knot is that no-one seems to know how to do them. The right way to do it is with the bow knot reflected relative to the base knot below it, like a reef knot, rather than oriented the same way, like a granny knot. I never knew this until a few years ago and since I've started doing it, I've stopped needing to double-knot my laces - they're secure enough for me with a single knot done properly. I always try to explain this to people when I get a chance, and no-one else seems to know about it, either.
I was taught how to tie my shoelaces by my granny, and sure enough, I was doing granny knots, and I was frustrated with some shoes, because the shoelaces would just come undone, and you'd have to double-tie the knot or something.
Until, at the ripe old age of 32, when a friend tipped me about Ian's shoelace site, and I finally learned how to tie my shoelaces properly.
It's a great example of not knowing what you don't know, because shoelaces, right?
Same here, noted how someone tried their leaves as it looked peculiar. Realised I was effectively tying grannies, changed the direction of my second loop; far more secure.
To me it's fascinating as it's something taught at a very early age, something used nearly every day, yet something a lot people seem to do "wrong" (inefficiently) by habit or ignorance.
But now my kids know and can suffer less unties, so that's good.
Similar thing for me, the "use a food packet as a bowl" trick (eg for crisps/potatoe chips).
I agree, and it's also amazing to me to see how well he's maintained the site in the ten years since I first saw it, including a tongue-in-cheek, clickbait-style granny knot celebs page[1], that produced a laugh-out-loud moment for me.
This is fascinating: Coldwar era CIA agents lacing their shoes as "a form of covert signalling, using straight segments interspersed with one or more visible crossovers at different positions."
Fun tech crossover, the word "aglet". In addition to the shoelace word, it was also the name of a Java mobile agents framework from IBM ~1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglets
I once explained to a co-worker that we needed to buy a packet of "ethernet aglets." They knew exactly what I was talking about, and to this day I still don't know what the actual name for the things is.
I love sites like this (and this one in particular). I remember stumbling on it many years ago, maybe a decade or more. No idea how I found it, but the secure knot is useful knowledge that's stuck with me all those years, and has come in handy many times. I don't really care anything about shoelaces, but I'm happy someone else does and built an enduring monument to that enthusiasm.
This fills me with anxiety - "Oh my god, are there superior knots and lacing patterns out there that I've been missing out on?!?! Where will I find the time to learn them?!?! Will I do like I often do, give up and revert to ORDINARY KNOTS?!¿!"
I do the standard shoelace knot the other way round from his page ( http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/standardknot.htm). I bet I've saved at least 1 minute over the past 35 years from doing this.
1. start with left over right starting knot
2. hold loop in left hand, thumb and index finger
3. feed other lace round the front, holding it with right thumb+index finger, then round the back, then through the hole, so it lands on the pad of your left thumb
4. use left thumb and right index finger to push/pull loop through hole, then grab it with left middle finger as it comes through (your thumb can remain in place)
5. use right thumb and 2nd/3rd phalange of right index finger to hold other loop (you'll probably be in roughly this position already by now)
6. well done, you've caught the rabbit :) (In this story, it does not escape.) Now pull its ears.
(If you'd rather have the loop in your right hand, no problem, but start with a right-over-left knot in step 1 I suppose.)
This is a superior approach, I think, because of how the lace meets your stationary thumb at the end of step 3 rather than your stationary finger, allowing a smoother step 4. I'm struggling to explain this coherently but basically you need multiple digits on the other side in order to quickly move your grip on the loop from one side of the main knot to the other. But if it's your thumb on the other side, you've only got the one digit...
(Maybe I just got it wrong while trying it out, though? This is after all literally the habit of a lifetime. The above is just based on my trying to figure out why the other way round felt inefficient, even after taking into account the basic difficulty of actually doing it in the first place.)
I used this site to learn about the Army Lacing [1] for a pair of boots that would normally take ten minutes to take off when I get home.
It seems silly, but learning an improved lacing method has not only saved me a lot of time in a given day, but its prevented unnecessary stress. The method gives a fantastic, tight fit that's incredibly easy to loosen.
118 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadQuite a lot of sailing has given me a good appreciation of knots. It's amazing how (when you're doing a lot of rope work) you can get a real instinctive sense of the pressures on a knot and how to create the best knot for the situation. In ocean racing there are places you have unusual needs (like tethering the running backstays to the cars while you adjust the angles).
Believe it or (k)not, there a branch of mathematical topology dedicated to knot theory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_theory
http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
Maybe I'll try to do it symmetrically more often.
I learned a few knots and even now when I buy a new pair of shoes I consult the site to see what lacing style would suit the shoe and my foot. (since different styles put different tension on the wearers foot).
I have to say, I'm happy it exists, it enriched my life in such a subtle way, this is the kind of content that the internet was made for in my opinion.
[1] https://www.xpandlaces.com/
http://cdn.planetshoes.com/images/11141/11141_119_zoom.jpg
If you really want the full dress boot option and are prepared to spend a lot, there's always RM Williams[2] of course. However, I've heard reports their quality has suffered in recent years. I have three pairs of Yearling Craftsman boots now between 15-25 years old. They've all been re-soled multiple times and the older ones are looking a bit worse for wear, but I've certainly had my money's worth out of them.
[0] http://baxterfootwear.com.au
[1] http://baxterfootwear.com.au/products/gringo/
[2] http://www.rmwilliams.com.au/
Orthogonal to shoes and such, I find that I end up searching for recommendations for products on reddit as opposed to a store or review engine. I prefer to know what enthusiasts think rather than a bunch of randoms who have voted based on a star system.
Are there are sites that just list products and have only a single recommendation for each category? "This is _the_ boot to buy if you are looking for cold weather boots. It's a good combination of warm, waterproof and stylish." That's basically what I was after and exactly what reddit delivered after some searching through relevant subreddits.
Both of these sites are so popular that their recommendations are usually the top seller in their respective Amazon categories.
Thanks for the recommendation. This looks great.
I can vouch for Wirecutter's audio equipment reviews in particular. I am a bit of an audio enthusiast, and they do quite well in this area. Their reviewers are well respected in the industry and they are, well, the total opposite of reviewers who recommend snake-oil crap like expensive speaker cables.
For single sheets, you can cut along the sides of the left and right edge which allows you to put your hands through and pull the duvet into the sheet, super easy and makes swapping the sheets easy.
There was a whole bunch of stuff, it's all incorporated into my lifestyle now so picking it out is difficult.
You can still grab the sheet "through" the corners though.
I'm doing exactly this. Would you mind sharing some of the other alternatives you discovered?
-Cleaning my entire apartment very thoroughly and keeping it that way. Makes me feel a lot better overall.
-Positive mental attitude always and trying not to stress about things as much. I am a very cynical person and I believe trying to think about things differently is important.
-Constantly analyzing what I am doing and thinking and asking people what I could have done differently, even if I don't see it as a failure there is always something to improve. The key is thinking objectively and not worrying about those mistakes, but keeping those things in mind in the future.
-Really pushing myself to do things out of my comfort zone every single day.
-Focus on making progress on something non-work related every single day.
- Taking to heart how chance plays a large role on short term success but doing things right plays a large role for long term success (playing backgammon taught me lot about this).
- Exploring the unwritten rules of small talk and common courtesy.
None of these have come naturally to to me, nor have I fully mastered them. I see them all as processes, not goals.
Also:
- Having kids. An everyday crash course in many things.
T-shirt folding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AWQ5aBjgE
Gift wrapping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qi8ZXUH_wY
Anyone know something similar for any other type of clothes?
The NYTimes wrote up a fairly lengthy article about her in July 2016, which I've been meaning to read: "Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff". [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/magazine/marie-kondo-and-...
EDIT: link information
Here is a video (she uses a magazine, but you just need a single sheet) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yaMc9Sz-YE
Probably not as fast but very effective if you need to travel with a couple of shirts.
http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
The Surgeons Knot is just a standard shoelace tie with 2 slight modifications - when you overlap the 2 sides of the lace you tuck the lace under twice. This, like a Timber Hitch, creates much more contact area and thus much more friction.
I have (not from that site) switched the way I tie a standard knot as I was doing grannies instead of reef-knots. This seems to have prevented unwanted unties.
Fun fact: searching for 'shoelace' on google puts this site on third place for me, right after shoelace.com and the wikipedia entry.
edit: Ian Figgen is the inventor of the Ian knot that somebody else has posted here. He has to be _really_ into shoelacing!
[1] http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
I see there's a page about this on the site: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm
Until, at the ripe old age of 32, when a friend tipped me about Ian's shoelace site, and I finally learned how to tie my shoelaces properly.
It's a great example of not knowing what you don't know, because shoelaces, right?
To me it's fascinating as it's something taught at a very early age, something used nearly every day, yet something a lot people seem to do "wrong" (inefficiently) by habit or ignorance.
But now my kids know and can suffer less unties, so that's good.
Similar thing for me, the "use a food packet as a bowl" trick (eg for crisps/potatoe chips).
But on that website I clicked almost all the banners.
This website is awesome. Designers, "content creators" and advertisers should learn from him.
[1] http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknottingcelebs.htm
This is fascinating: Coldwar era CIA agents lacing their shoes as "a form of covert signalling, using straight segments interspersed with one or more visible crossovers at different positions."
http://phineasandferb.wikia.com/wiki/Tip_of_the_Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evcsj1gx1CE
http://www.laceanchors.com
I personally don't use them (too expensive) and use a knot instead.
I haven't noticed a difference in fit or comfort for casual shoes.
1. start with left over right starting knot
2. hold loop in left hand, thumb and index finger
3. feed other lace round the front, holding it with right thumb+index finger, then round the back, then through the hole, so it lands on the pad of your left thumb
4. use left thumb and right index finger to push/pull loop through hole, then grab it with left middle finger as it comes through (your thumb can remain in place)
5. use right thumb and 2nd/3rd phalange of right index finger to hold other loop (you'll probably be in roughly this position already by now)
6. well done, you've caught the rabbit :) (In this story, it does not escape.) Now pull its ears.
(If you'd rather have the loop in your right hand, no problem, but start with a right-over-left knot in step 1 I suppose.)
This is a superior approach, I think, because of how the lace meets your stationary thumb at the end of step 3 rather than your stationary finger, allowing a smoother step 4. I'm struggling to explain this coherently but basically you need multiple digits on the other side in order to quickly move your grip on the loop from one side of the main knot to the other. But if it's your thumb on the other side, you've only got the one digit...
(Maybe I just got it wrong while trying it out, though? This is after all literally the habit of a lifetime. The above is just based on my trying to figure out why the other way round felt inefficient, even after taking into account the basic difficulty of actually doing it in the first place.)
It seems silly, but learning an improved lacing method has not only saved me a lot of time in a given day, but its prevented unnecessary stress. The method gives a fantastic, tight fit that's incredibly easy to loosen.
[1] http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/armylacing.htm