That would not work for me. I need to keep one finger on the slip knot at all times or it becomes loose, resulting in a very unsatisfying knot. This has been by far the biggest hurdle to teaching my kids to tie a decent knot in their shoelaces: they can move through the motions just fine but it's always loose. I actually start with my left index finger on the slip knot then transition to my right index finger halfway through - much more complicated than it at first seems.
I've been using the Ian knot for probably 10 years now, if anything it's easier to tie it tight since you can keep the tension on the first not held until the very end.
Not sure if this would help, and I'm not exactly sure I'm understanding you correctly, but when I tie hockey stakes, instead of a single "left-over-right starting knot" (using terminology from the post), I wrap around two or even three times. This provides enough friction for that first knot to stay put while I tie the loops of the standard shoelace knot (not the Ian knot, with which I'm unfamiliar).
The reason your knot does not come undone has nothing to do with tension and everything to do with the order of the way you tie it. Left over right, then right over left. If you learned the standard knot as a kid in the right order and continue to do it the same way today, then the Ian knot will tie the exact same knot. The only difference is that the Ian knot will wear your laces more evenly and it ties faster.
I didn’t mean that tension keeps my knots tied (though clearly some tension is necessary), it was two separate replies — and I’m pretty sure I make granny knots. Eh maybe knot.
Knots I've tied Ian's way are the most taut, precisely because I have no issue applying tension all the way, instead of the old method with switching hands and stuff, where that was impossible.
If you're doing it right, the result is not like keeping a finger on the slipknot - it's better (and simpler, faster and as taut as you want).
This is my issue and the sole reason I haven’t adopted the Ian knot. I didn’t realize it but I do the same finger swap that you do.
I’m a runner and it’s important for my laces to be exactly as tight as I need them to be. I’m wondering if others here aren’t as exacting with their knot tension needs.
With the Secure Ian's knot, I keep the slip knot loose and only strengthen the other one against that one. It stays firm and my shoe stays comfortable.
I use a similar technique to the Ian knot except I pinch the shoelace instead so only the forefinger and pinky are involved and my middle finger is free to hold the slip knot.
Tried that knot and aside from taking several minutes for me to figure it out, it didn't seem to result in a knot that held very well. I'll stick with the standard way I learned 40 years ago and can do without thinking.
The end knot is identical to the standard bowknot, so it seems unlikely that this would hold any worse. If you're currently tying your shoes in a granny knot, I would be very surprised if that held better than a bowknot.
I've used this method to tie all my shoes for more than a decade and it holds much better than the granny knot, which I'd guess is probably 50% of people (as whether not you end up with a granny or a bow knot is just the toss of a coin). The benefit of Ian's tying method is that it is impossible to end up with a granny knot.
My shoes never* come untied, without needing to resort to a "double-knot".
* Except my Sperry Docksiders, which have leather laces and don't seem to keep any kind of knot very well.
My regular shoes have round laces, I'd guess they are nylon, some kind of synthetic fiber. Sort of slippery. Never have a problem with them coming untied if I pull the knot tight though. I don't double knot.
Maybe I did the Ian knot wrong. Don't have a problem with the knot I use so not investigating further.
I don't know why anybody makes round laces, especially out of a material that slips.
I have a pair of dress shoes that came with round laces. Even with a "correct" knot, even with double-knotting, they always came undone. I replaced the laces with standard flat laces. They might not look as good, but they look better than having to re-tie them every 30 minutes.
I actually switched to the Ian Knot specifically to handle the stiffer leather laces of boat shoes and boots. Previously, getting a knot in leather to hold was a miracle and I would slip the shoes on and off (causing unnecessary wear and tear) just to avoid disturbing the knot. The Ian Knot allows me to treat leather laces like any other material and has extended the life of several pairs of shoes as a result.
I will say that I cinch the knot tighter with leather laces than any other material because, like you mentioned, they are fussy.
This is how I've been tying my shoes for a while and can recommend! Unfortunately I did not learn it from the inventor's website but rather from this site[1], which may be a total knockoff or may be a case of "parallel thinking".
Well so either way the "proper" way is to end up with a bowknot, as demonstrated. However, the TED talk's method of getting there I would actually classify as wrong.
If you want to use the "bunny rabbit" method, the easiest way to turn your granny into a bow is just to switch which way you tie the laces over each other at the beginning – that is much easier than trying to invert the bunny ear thingy.
However, the even easier way (and what GC was pointing out) is the "Ian" method, where you pull the bows through each other simultaneously, which (with practice) is faster and always guarantees a bow knot.
Mr Fieggen's site is a lot older than that, so possibly "parallel thinking"... But because of the cutesy story, cheesy layout, and above all, "Freedom Fries!" name, I'll go with knock-off.
After I stumbled upon this site years ago, the Ian knot is how I tie my shoes every time.
The hardest part about this knot is making sure that somebody is watching while you do it. Every time I tie my shoes alone, I feel an upwelling of regret, as if there has been an opportunity lost.
Given a clockwise counting of corners, with the "outside" facing away from you (so you are looking at / reaching "into" the sheets from the elastic side):
grab the inside of 2, invert, shove into the inside of 1.
do the same for 3 into 4.
now you have a sheet folded in half, with two pairs of corners together.
grab the inside of 1+2, invert, shove into the inside of 3+4.
now it's folded to a quarter, and all the messy stuff is together.
lay out flat, straighten messy stuff a bit, so you can do the next step more easily.
grab the whole thing, chuck into the closet.
I never understood the need to fold bed sheets. Crinkled sheets simply aren’t a problem I’ve ever had; you barely notice the difference once they’re stretched over the bed and pillows. I have a blanket box at the end of the bed; I just shove the second set of sheets in straight out of the dryer.
(I do fold sheets for the guest bed but that’s because the alternative set might spend months on the shelf. Most of the time the same set is washed and put straight back on the bed.)
You fold them so you can stack them on other folded things. If they're messily folded, the pile falls over as you carry the basket upstairs, or stack other things onto them on your shelves.
For me bedsheets are their own wash cycle, so there’s nothing to stack them with. I just carry them upstairs and dump them into the blanket box when they're done. No need for a basket.
But let's say your washing process is different to mine. I'd still rather do two trips upstairs than fold sheets.
Agree, the other problem is that the knot hardly ever comes loose. So you have to put in extra effort to create those spontaneous moments where you have to tighten your laces after someones points out they went "loose".
I’m not sure if it was “invented” by the author, I’ve been doing the same knot for 30 years. We call it rå-bands-knop (raw-strings-knot would be a literal translation) and I believe most kids here learn it at an early age.
Råbandsknop is the same as square knot; granny knot (kärringknut) but the right way around. As shoelace knots, (rosetter) both are of course "slipped".
The "Ian knot" that people are discussing is neither square nor granny knot in and of itself, but how you make it: The technique of having a loose loop in each hand and "pulling both through each other", which is much faster than tbe "ordinary" ways of making each that he presents on each separate knot's page. Topologically it results in the exact same end result: Do it the right way around and you get a square knot; the wrong way, a granny knot.
A bit weird of the tomtenisse to link to that exact page of the site; granny knot / kärringknut is the absolute worst result you could end up with. The whole site is pretty much about how to avoid ending up with one. (OK, slight exaggeration there.)
A few years ago I switched from the "Granny Knot" to the "Ian Knot" [0] in order to (1) eliminate the need for "double knotting" and (2) straighten the bow. Despite the few embarrassing times early in the process where friends observed me struggling to tie my shoes, I can confidently say the switch has been worth it.
I did this too and also momentarily forgot how to tie my shoes! (Forgot the new method, and the old method.) Now I have saved literally minutes of my life on shoe tying.
Is there a word or a phrase for this phenomenon? When something becomes a habit requiring no thought at all and then, when forced to actually think about it, the brain draws a complete blank?
Isn't it just muscle memory? Like how it is difficult to switch back and forth between a Qwerty keyboard and a Dvorak keyboard, except with the addition of balance thrown in.
A few weeks ago I went to play a piece on the piano. I completely blanked, tried to piece together the intro by ear but wasn't really getting anywhere. My teacher played the intro and then boom, the whole thing was back under my fingers.
This happens to me all the time when playing guitar. I could be there blankly strumming wondering what the notes were, but the moment I get something right, I’ve got it. Or sometimes it’s that I can’t remember the rhythm at all and I try to hum it or anything at all that might help me remember and once I’ve got the first few moments it comes flooding back.
It doesn’t help that I’m relatively new to guitar.
Works well until you encounter a new keypad layout (eg when going abroad). I locked my card once like this although I had been typing the code for years before.
Android has this "draw a path through some dots in a grid" analogue to a PIN code. On the boot screen, the grid is a somewhat different size than on the unlock screen. This defeated my muscle memory, and my conscious memory had lost its backup.
Same thing! I had played the piece 5 minutes before the lesson and right after the lesson warmup (I warmup before the lesson so that my teacher thinks I'm better than I really am...ego..self denial...whatever) he asks for the piece and I can't play beyond the first bar.
I want to say sincerely that this exchange is life-changing. I'm old and in rapidly declining physical health. I feel like my brain is working just fine, but the fact of my always-bad memory has been leaving me with the existentially terrifying question "is that going too?"
I realize now I've been having these incidents all my life. Recently I've had the niggling sensation that maybe it's just self-delusion. Nope! Been going on the whole time, just like the lot of you. Thanks for sharing, and I mean that.
So I think it is clear that there are better alternatives to a granny knot in a technical sense, I am still skeptical that there is really value added.
Outside of achieving fashion perfection on a Hollywood red carpet, I find it hard to imagine there is value in spending the time and energy to learn and remember to tie your shoes the right way, rather than just a double knot. It seems like more of a burden than anything.
the ian's secure knot is one of those things that you don't think will make much of a difference to your daily life but it's like inventing a way to not stub your toe every now and again. well worth it.
I learned to tie Ian's Secure Knot when I had a pair of shoelaces that liked to come untied constantly (I guess the material was too slippery, or something). Never had the problem again.
Some other trivial life hacks aren't necessarily worth it in practice. With the T-shirt folding one, for instance, the bottom shirt of a stack of shirts tends to unfold itself when you pick up the stack, since one arm of the shirt is basically just folded underneath. The mild inconvenience outweighed the mild convenience for me, and I no longer fold shirts that way.
I'll probably tie my shoes with Ian's knot for life, though.
Is it easy to do a tight Ian's Secure Knot? The only place I would need a more secure knot is when skiing and then I also need to tie the laces very tight. Keeping the laces tight while creating the loops seems slightly difficult.
I'm a figure skater. I tie my regular shoes with Ian's secure knot. My skating boots are tied with more regular knots however. Ski shoes would be very similar.
Ian's secure knot doesn't really make sense on such long laces anyway, and making it tight is not very easy because you can't pull to tighten further like you normally would.
The main advantage of Ian's secure knot is that it doesn't come loose over time. But you won't have that problem in ski or skating shoes because you will be redoing much more of the lacing every single time you put them on; a much tighter one at that. So the few hours you'll have your boots on shouldn't make a difference, and if it does, there's something else off in your lacing technique.
I like that one also, never comes undone. However there is one major downside: When one of the ends accidentally goes through a loop before pulling on it to untie your shoes, you end up with a very annoying solid knot instead that takes time to fiddle apart.
Yes, it does, but the Ian Knot is more reliable, especially in places where you don't have the instant muscle memory like shoelaces. If you learn the standard knot incorrectly it results in you doing a Granny Knot. But if you try to tie the Ian's Knot, you can't tie it incorrectly because it just doesn't work. And of course yes, it's faster.
ETA: Also, OP may have been tying a Granny Knot from time to time which results in shoelaces coming untied very quickly. So the Ian knot gets you both faster tied shoes and shoes that stay tied.
Well, tying the Ian Knot still requires you to do your starting knot in the correct orientation. Mixing it up will still result in the Granny Knot. From the other responses, it sounds like some are still getting Granny Knots even when using Ian's tying method.
You are correct, as indicated by the following quote on the page I linked: “The finished Ian Knot is identical to either the Standard Shoelace Knot [...].”
Changing my Granny Knot (unbalanced) to a Standard Shoelace Knot (balanced) would have produced the same result. However, I found the Ian Knot approach to be helpful in preventing me from absentmindedly reverting back to the Granny Knot.
Went to the shoes to test: Ian Knot is faster and the cord is “relaxed” (less internal stress to contribute towards loosening) rather than twisted.
I’ll try words to describe the Ian Knot: Cross the laces, tuck one under the other, and pull; let go, then pick up a “bunny ear” loop in each hand, one on either side of the pre-knot; with your middle finger, push the out-side of each “ear” through the opposite loop; with thumb and middle finger of each hand, grab the loops simultaneously as they come through; pull tight. Looks like a double knot (two loops, each around the neck of the other) with each free end fed back through, forming the loops and ensuring easy undoing.
How do you do it? I've been using it for more than a decade too and I can't make it that solid. I'm very active and clumsy so I'm really stressing the knot lots of times.
I do both together, starting with two twists and then also wrapping the loops twice.
I experimented with the double knot following some foot pain; the advantage for me is that the knot doesn't really slip any, allowing me to set the tension I want and not have to revisit it. I guess you then also have to make sure not to over-tighten.
I did the same thing! I fixed my granny knot habit years ago, but apparently also subconsciously weeded tie-every-time laces out of my habits--which is saying something, because I rarely wear anything but Chuck Taylors!
That Full Windsor - it's a revelation to me that it looks good even without the top button of the shirt buttoned. I also thought I had to button the top button of my shirt, which I hate.
The end result is identical, not really slower, it's easier to adjust the "proportion' during the process, and it works better with long sleeves with minor adjustment.
Half Windsor is still more in fashion and still produces a neat, symmetrical knot. Beware, though, after learning a good knot you will see the four in hand knot everywhere and it will annoy you.
I've been using the Full Windsor since my dad taught it to me when I was 13. I'm not much one for fashion, but I think it's a timeless knot. Apparently James Bond didn't think much of it though. :-)
> Also, tie wearers, take the time to learn a Full Windsor
I mean, if you are into attempts to simulate the look of a four-in-hand knot used on a wider piece of material as popularized by a particular celebrity Nazi sympathizer, sure.
Unless you are particularly tall, in which case finding ties long enough to wear with a full windsor is enough trouble that you might as well find something wide enough to achieve the effect the authentic way with a four-in-hand.
The Windsor looks nothing like the four-in-hand. It's a symmetric, full knot. The four-in-hand is asymmetric and skinny. I happen to think the Windsor is the best looking knot here:
The Windsor is an attempt to simulate, with a common tie, the look of a knot the late Duke of Windsor was known to wear, which was, in fact, a four-in-hand tied on a much wider (and, I suspect—though I have seen no documentation on this point—differently shaped) piece of material than common ties.
> I've been using it since I was 13. My father taught it to me. His father taught it to him. I've taught it to my son.
I’m not sure what relevance that has; I learned it about the same age, also from my father (who I suspect didn’t learn it from his father, whose personality, age, and socioeconomic background probably would not have inclined him to jump on that particular newfangled fashion trend.)
I've been using the Ian knot for many years, to the point I'm now very slow making the normal knot.
I find the Ian knot effective enough, but I think it comes undone more easily than a normal shoelace knot, I had to tie my shoes a lot back when I was outside for many hours of the day and night.
I have shoes I do not untie. For example, I have some mocassins for around the house with a rawhide lace that is basically a decoration. But it comes untied!
I've been using the Ian knot for years now and every now and then (like once a year at most) someone will notice how quickly I tie my laces. It looks impossible for people used to the school method.
The problem I see with this is that with some types of laces the first knot could loosen up while making the second part. But that might be fixed with technique.
I remember coming across this website when I was 11 or 12. I went to school and showed the Ian Knot to my friends. I was like "guys, look how fast I can tie my shoelaces". They were all super impressed. I'm 23 now and this is still how I tie my shoelaces
And going from "Granny Knot" to "Ian Knot" is actually a lot simpler than relearning the correct way to tie the normal knot. I tried that first ... but relearning the exact same finger movements but mirrored was not possible for me.
I also use his "Secure Knot" [1] when hiking ... although my SO ridicules me for tying shoes with the bunny ears technique :-)
Seconded. Since switching to the Ian knot I never find myself retieing my shoes. Even the granny knot version stays tied. It's especially good on thin slippery laces used on dress shoes.
Yup, the Ian Knot and the Secure Knot (https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm) have taken over my household. The latter is particularly good for kids, who often learn the "bunny ears" method, but then switch to double-knotting and all the attendant untangling hassle.
Do the "bunny ears" way of tying your shoes but loop both "ears" through. Presto, a knot that won't work its way undone and you can usually tell when you step on a lace because there's so much resistance.
This site, or a page on it, has been submitted many times, and had many lively comment sections, in case you are interesting in what people said in the past.
If you live in a humid environment, your towels can very easily get a bit funky smelling kinda quickly. Not making them as damp/wet can make a big difference.
Because wet towels can grow mold/smell, which means I need to wash them more which in turn means I need to replace them more (since even cold washes damage tower's fibers).
There's no downside to getting towels less wet (in particular when you're just flicking off water/pushing it off with your hand/arm for free), but there are upsides. So why not?
This is one of my favorite Ted talks ever. I have referred so many people to it. It’s amazing what a difference a few extra little details can make in how fast and easy it is to dry my hands.
That said, I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to tie my shoes and never found a big difference between them.
It seems amazing that some people have to be taught things like this as an adult. There seem to be certain things that some people will "just know", while others need to be explicitly taught. I needed to explicitly learn how to socialise. Nobody teaches you how to do it, but there are many rules you are expected to know and follow. I think a lot of these things aren't explicitly taught because it allows certain people to be superior to others. Finance is a good example of this.
i agree... i noticed a similar thing when i've had my 1-1 with leadership. i felt so good after walking out of those meetings but nothing was really done. it was a number of years later, when i discovered a curriculum that is thought to "life coaches" (and i suspect among other people but it's through this venue that i discovered this), that basically teaches you how to listen. it goes beyond just socializing. these folks in leadership applied the same techniques that were taught to life coaches. nobody teaches this either.
If you like this, you may also be interested in the Animated Knots website, which includes a page on Square/Reef knots, the Granny mistake, and the Shoelace Bow:
As others have mentioned, Ian's knots has great reccommendations, but overlooked is the "surgeon's knot".
This one has two twists instead of the normal one, and comes out like a square knot if done right. It won't come untied by itself, ever. But you can untie it by tugging on the tails of the laces. You can do this one with a thumb on the initial bend, unlike the "bunny ears" style knots.
It's a hell of a lot better than the "double knot" your kids' teachers will do if they go to school with any kind of single knot, square or not. Double knotting just results in big jams when one tries to untie it later.
I don't know why, but the picture of the shoe, with the knot at the toe end of the shoe, makes me angry. I mean, literally angry, very angry, yet there is zero valid reason to be that emotionally charged about it.
Intellectually, I wonder "how will one get their shoe off, without lots of work". Yet the anger is intense for some inane reason.
Now I wonder if I need therapy, due to some shoe related horror in the past.
Wow. It does. Wild. I literally saw the toe end of a shoe there, due to the darker colour. I wonder how many others will see that first, or if I'm just borked.
(I had to go back, stare at it, enlarge the pic, stare some more, then I saw it the correct way.)
It actually isn't at the toe end of the shoe, but I thought the same thing the first time I looked at it. The bit that looks like the "toe" is actually the hole where your foot goes in, and the perspective is reversed from what you'd be looking at if you were staring down at shoes you are currently wearing. For some reason my brain initially interpreted the color of the "hole" as an accent color you might have at the toe of your shoes.
Had I seen the shoe in the configuration you're referring to, I would have had the same reaction. In fact, such a position would be offensive to all reasonable persons. The mental image alone is revolting
why did that get a lower rating than ian's secure knot?
Is it the security/convenience ratio?
security=1/convenience
EDIT: Wait! I didn't notice this:
"Now, simply pull the loops to tighten the knot. The whole twisted mess of the previous drawing will rearrange itself into exactly the same finished knot as my Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot."
Both unexpected and welcome to see this site on here.
I had never learned how to tie my shoes and some day decided to look it up online. I taught myself the Ian Knot from the pictures on the site and have been using it since. That was over ten years ago and it's still the only way I know to tie my shoes. Thank you, Ian.
This is why I switched to only wearing sneakers that don't have laces. The fact that there's a whole site dedicated to tying your shoes properly tells you everything you need to know and yet this is largely a solved problem. You might think I look childish wearing velco/slip-on shoes all the time but I get a lot of compliments on my Adidas and my Metcons.
I too prefer this approach tbh. Since a few years I've only used shoes or sneakers with no laces. At the beginning I though that I was going to have problems with it, but all has been good.
You can also wear a fleece everywhere. It's light and comfortable. But it just doesn't look as good and people will judge you differently for it in some contexts.
Clothing is just as much about comfort as it is about impressions.
The explanation here is excellent, but the same site has an even more useful page that’s easy to overlook: the “granny knot analyser” that will tell you if your current knot is secure or not.
i went through this process several years ago. it was initially easy to force myself into correct technique, as "do the opposite of what feels natural" stably led me down the right knot path. then after maybe six weeks or so the correct way felt natural and i had to burn cycles deciding if this was the good "feels natural" or the bad "feels natural". a year or two after that i was back to tying them without thinking, correctly now.
It's pretty odd that Usain Bolt ties granny knots. As a runner, I use reef knots and I double tie, also, because at my slow speed I don't want to have to waste time retying! He could run a couple of 100m sprints in the time it would take me to fix my laces.
This may the only context in which my running can be compared with Bolt's!
The proper knot to tie for shoes is a turquoise turtle, no question. I always laugh (on the inside) when I see shoe laces with crooked bows, and even more when I see them with the fabled "double knot" on top of a granny knot. There's an old saying, "If you don't know knots, you tie lots"
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DkCoG6n8vk
[0] - https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
I've been using the Ian knot for probably 10 years now, if anything it's easier to tie it tight since you can keep the tension on the first not held until the very end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgeon%27s_knot
Re people saying the Ian knot doesn’t come undone: neither do my normal ones.
If you're doing it right, the result is not like keeping a finger on the slipknot - it's better (and simpler, faster and as taut as you want).
I’m a runner and it’s important for my laces to be exactly as tight as I need them to be. I’m wondering if others here aren’t as exacting with their knot tension needs.
The technique I use looks like this: https://youtu.be/_aAeI7p-Tkc?t=11
I've used this method to tie all my shoes for more than a decade and it holds much better than the granny knot, which I'd guess is probably 50% of people (as whether not you end up with a granny or a bow knot is just the toss of a coin). The benefit of Ian's tying method is that it is impossible to end up with a granny knot.
My shoes never* come untied, without needing to resort to a "double-knot".
* Except my Sperry Docksiders, which have leather laces and don't seem to keep any kind of knot very well.
Maybe I did the Ian knot wrong. Don't have a problem with the knot I use so not investigating further.
I don't know why anybody makes round laces, especially out of a material that slips.
I have a pair of dress shoes that came with round laces. Even with a "correct" knot, even with double-knotting, they always came undone. I replaced the laces with standard flat laces. They might not look as good, but they look better than having to re-tie them every 30 minutes.
I will say that I cinch the knot tighter with leather laces than any other material because, like you mentioned, they are fussy.
[1] https://freedomknot.com/
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA
If you want to use the "bunny rabbit" method, the easiest way to turn your granny into a bow is just to switch which way you tie the laces over each other at the beginning – that is much easier than trying to invert the bunny ear thingy.
However, the even easier way (and what GC was pointing out) is the "Ian" method, where you pull the bows through each other simultaneously, which (with practice) is faster and always guarantees a bow knot.
Mr Fieggen's site is a lot older than that, so possibly "parallel thinking"... But because of the cutesy story, cheesy layout, and above all, "Freedom Fries!" name, I'll go with knock-off.
The hardest part about this knot is making sure that somebody is watching while you do it. Every time I tie my shoes alone, I feel an upwelling of regret, as if there has been an opportunity lost.
Step 2: There is no Step 2
(I do fold sheets for the guest bed but that’s because the alternative set might spend months on the shelf. Most of the time the same set is washed and put straight back on the bed.)
But let's say your washing process is different to mine. I'd still rather do two trips upstairs than fold sheets.
(btw I use Ian's knot)
The "Ian knot" that people are discussing is neither square nor granny knot in and of itself, but how you make it: The technique of having a loose loop in each hand and "pulling both through each other", which is much faster than tbe "ordinary" ways of making each that he presents on each separate knot's page. Topologically it results in the exact same end result: Do it the right way around and you get a square knot; the wrong way, a granny knot.
A bit weird of the tomtenisse to link to that exact page of the site; granny knot / kärringknut is the absolute worst result you could end up with. The whole site is pretty much about how to avoid ending up with one. (OK, slight exaggeration there.)
[0] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
From 1994!
And I like being reminded of the great pressure many creative spirits feel. It's serious business, managing pressure and also doing your work.
https://outline.com/SeEEHt
https://archive.is/D05nu
For the future, you can usually create these for yourself by going to top of the sites that I linked.
“A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.“
https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0
The brain really is fascinating.
It doesn’t help that I’m relatively new to guitar.
I've played for 16 years and I still have these moments. But thankfully it's so satisfying when the music finally kicks in.
My mum frequently punches in her postal code instead.
I realize now I've been having these incidents all my life. Recently I've had the niggling sensation that maybe it's just self-delusion. Nope! Been going on the whole time, just like the lot of you. Thanks for sharing, and I mean that.
So I think it is clear that there are better alternatives to a granny knot in a technical sense, I am still skeptical that there is really value added.
Outside of achieving fashion perfection on a Hollywood red carpet, I find it hard to imagine there is value in spending the time and energy to learn and remember to tie your shoes the right way, rather than just a double knot. It seems like more of a burden than anything.
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
Some other trivial life hacks aren't necessarily worth it in practice. With the T-shirt folding one, for instance, the bottom shirt of a stack of shirts tends to unfold itself when you pick up the stack, since one arm of the shirt is basically just folded underneath. The mild inconvenience outweighed the mild convenience for me, and I no longer fold shirts that way.
I'll probably tie my shoes with Ian's knot for life, though.
I use the standard "bunny goes around the tree" methodology, except I go around twice before pulling the loop through both.
It might be easier for your use case, because you can hold the knot with one hand while sending the bunny around the tree with the other.
It's the one I use with my paracord laces.
Never comes undone.
Ian's secure knot doesn't really make sense on such long laces anyway, and making it tight is not very easy because you can't pull to tighten further like you normally would.
The main advantage of Ian's secure knot is that it doesn't come loose over time. But you won't have that problem in ski or skating shoes because you will be redoing much more of the lacing every single time you put them on; a much tighter one at that. So the few hours you'll have your boots on shouldn't make a difference, and if it does, there's something else off in your lacing technique.
ETA: Also, OP may have been tying a Granny Knot from time to time which results in shoelaces coming untied very quickly. So the Ian knot gets you both faster tied shoes and shoes that stay tied.
Changing my Granny Knot (unbalanced) to a Standard Shoelace Knot (balanced) would have produced the same result. However, I found the Ian Knot approach to be helpful in preventing me from absentmindedly reverting back to the Granny Knot.
I’ll try words to describe the Ian Knot: Cross the laces, tuck one under the other, and pull; let go, then pick up a “bunny ear” loop in each hand, one on either side of the pre-knot; with your middle finger, push the out-side of each “ear” through the opposite loop; with thumb and middle finger of each hand, grab the loops simultaneously as they come through; pull tight. Looks like a double knot (two loops, each around the neck of the other) with each free end fed back through, forming the loops and ensuring easy undoing.
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/doublestartknot.htm
And then also a surgeons knot is shown:
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/surgeonknot.htm
(which doesn't use the double starting knot)
I do both together, starting with two twists and then also wrapping the loops twice.
I experimented with the double knot following some foot pain; the advantage for me is that the knot doesn't really slip any, allowing me to set the tension I want and not have to revisit it. I guess you then also have to make sure not to over-tighten.
I read about it here: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/running-doc-d...
Especially funny to casually mention it to coworkers or seniors
https://youtu.be/dNr1oLhZ0zs
Also, tie wearers, take the time to learn a Full Windsor:
https://youtu.be/HXJx8j7JpKY
https://i.imgur.com/CRxFYwS.png
The end result is identical, not really slower, it's easier to adjust the "proportion' during the process, and it works better with long sleeves with minor adjustment.
I mean, if you are into attempts to simulate the look of a four-in-hand knot used on a wider piece of material as popularized by a particular celebrity Nazi sympathizer, sure.
Unless you are particularly tall, in which case finding ties long enough to wear with a full windsor is enough trouble that you might as well find something wide enough to achieve the effect the authentic way with a four-in-hand.
https://www.ties.com/how-to-tie-a-tie/windsor
(Scroll down to Explore More Knots.)
I've been using it since I was 13. My father taught it to me. His father taught it to him. I've taught it to my son.
I haven't tied the the Pratt knot before, but it looks like it's a nice nearly symmetrical knot that doesn't use up much of the tie.
The Windsor is an attempt to simulate, with a common tie, the look of a knot the late Duke of Windsor was known to wear, which was, in fact, a four-in-hand tied on a much wider (and, I suspect—though I have seen no documentation on this point—differently shaped) piece of material than common ties.
> I've been using it since I was 13. My father taught it to me. His father taught it to him. I've taught it to my son.
I’m not sure what relevance that has; I learned it about the same age, also from my father (who I suspect didn’t learn it from his father, whose personality, age, and socioeconomic background probably would not have inclined him to jump on that particular newfangled fashion trend.)
I find the Ian knot effective enough, but I think it comes undone more easily than a normal shoelace knot, I had to tie my shoes a lot back when I was outside for many hours of the day and night.
There is also https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm.
There is a handy listing of which knots are actually different towards the bottom of this page: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knotcomparison.htm#identica...
So for those kinds of things, I use the ian secure knot: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
Actually, with the rawhide nonsense on one pair, even that would eventually come loose so I zip-tied the middle of the knot. :)
And going from "Granny Knot" to "Ian Knot" is actually a lot simpler than relearning the correct way to tie the normal knot. I tried that first ... but relearning the exact same finger movements but mirrored was not possible for me.
I also use his "Secure Knot" [1] when hiking ... although my SO ridicules me for tying shoes with the bunny ears technique :-)
[1] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
Do the "bunny ears" way of tying your shoes but loop both "ears" through. Presto, a knot that won't work its way undone and you can usually tell when you step on a lace because there's so much resistance.
Also how I tie my youngest's cleats for soccer and t-ball: he hasn't had his shoelaces come undone since I switched to this technique.
I know now we were totally wrong about that!
This kind of website is why I love the internet. I mean, look at the level of devotion on display here!
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/twoloopknot.htm
Professor Shoelace kind of looks like a topology professor of mine.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FMBSblpcrc
That and using the back of my hand/arm to push off the water from my body after a shower keep our towels much dryer and nicer.
There's no downside to getting towels less wet (in particular when you're just flicking off water/pushing it off with your hand/arm for free), but there are upsides. So why not?
That said, I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to tie my shoes and never found a big difference between them.
https://www.animatedknots.com/square-knot
https://www.animatedknots.com/shoelace-bow-knot
The latter page links back to the submitted link!
This one has two twists instead of the normal one, and comes out like a square knot if done right. It won't come untied by itself, ever. But you can untie it by tugging on the tails of the laces. You can do this one with a thumb on the initial bend, unlike the "bunny ears" style knots.
It's a hell of a lot better than the "double knot" your kids' teachers will do if they go to school with any kind of single knot, square or not. Double knotting just results in big jams when one tries to untie it later.
Check out the surgeon's knot: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/surgeonknot.htm
Intellectually, I wonder "how will one get their shoe off, without lots of work". Yet the anger is intense for some inane reason.
Now I wonder if I need therapy, due to some shoe related horror in the past.
What are you talking about? That photo shows the knot at the heel end.
(I had to go back, stare at it, enlarge the pic, stare some more, then I saw it the correct way.)
The perspective of the picture fooled me for a moment too, but this knot is in the usual position.
Hope that makes you feel better.
Is it the security/convenience ratio?
security=1/convenience
EDIT: Wait! I didn't notice this:
"Now, simply pull the loops to tighten the knot. The whole twisted mess of the previous drawing will rearrange itself into exactly the same finished knot as my Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot."
I had never learned how to tie my shoes and some day decided to look it up online. I taught myself the Ian Knot from the pictures on the site and have been using it since. That was over ten years ago and it's still the only way I know to tie my shoes. Thank you, Ian.
Seriously, who has time to tie their shoelaces everytime they put on their shoes?
Clothing is just as much about comfort as it is about impressions.
Similarly: half of the top 10 most-voted questions on StackOverflow are about Git.
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknotanalyser.htm
What a wonderful website.
(Ever since the pandemic began I've only worn sandals or a certain pair of sneakers with very round laces. Maybe round laces stick worse?)
EDIT: Looks like I should try the surgeon's knot.
Great site. Thank you.
This may the only context in which my running can be compared with Bolt's!