Knots are cool. I felt like quite the badass a few years ago when a kayaking friend and mentor taught me how to tie a bowline knot to help secure my kayak to the roof of my car. It was around that time that I found and downloaded the massive 638-page PDF version of the 1944 seminal knot manual, Ashley’s Book of Knots. But, it’s a 638-page PDF. I didn’t get very far.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m obsessed with tying things on rocks. And knitting, crochet, macrame and weaving, which are really all just interesting ways to complicate a string of fibre. And I realized that knots are pretty central to a lot of my favourite creative practices!
Adapting decorative knots for rock wrapping
I’ve adapted a couple of classic decorative knots into rock wraps in the last year, including the Josephine or Double Coin knot, the Carrick Bend Mat, and the delightfully named Turk’s Head Woggle.
I even pulled together a quick demonstration of how I turned the Carrick Bend Mat into a rock wrap:
My curiosity piqued, I started actively looking for classic knots that could be adapted for rock wrapping and came across the Japanese art of Mizuhiki. Mizuhiki seems to be both the name of the material, a paper cord made of starch and washi tape, and the act itself of creating decorative knots that often adorn gifts and envelopes. In Mizuhiki, the knot itself, the number of strands and the colour of the strands all imbue significance. I followed a YouTube tutorial on how to make an awabi (abalone) knot in three strands of cheerful colours and adapted it to make this rock wrap:
By that point, my curiosity engine was firing on all cylinders and I defaulted to my favourite way to harvest new creative methods and ideas: I took a stack of books out of the library. (I can’t help myself. I do love the internet, but there’s a 10 year old inside me who cleared out entire sections of the local branch of the public library chasing down interests from planetary science to paranormal explorations. With the magic of interlibrary loans, the fuel to feed my creative fires is nearly limitless!)
A Year of Knots
And that’s how I came across Windy Chien’s absolutely delightful book and concept, A Year of Knots. I had flipped through one other book before I picked up Windy’s book, and though it was nice I was done with it after about 10 minutes of searching it for interesting patterns. Windy’s book captivated me from the start, maybe because I sensed from the beginning that she and I are kindred spirits and of approximately the same vintage. (Turns out she is 58 and I’m 56.)
In 2016, on a quest to deepen her creative knowledge of macrame and knots, Windy decided to tie a knot every day for a year and document it on Instagram. You may or may not know that in February 2009, I decided rather out of the blue that I would take a photograph every single day for a year and document it. And just as Windy describes in her book, I learned so much more about myself, my creative soul and the craft of photography than I could have ever expected when I thought I was simply taking a picture each day. I deeply resonated with her description of what seemed a simple project (learn, tie and document one new knot each day for a year for her, take a photograph and share it each day for a year for me) could drastically change you in ways you had no way to anticipate.
In addition to the information about knots and the projects, The Year of Knots is a compelling story about Windy’s creative journey and what she learned along the way, and I found myself flipping past the knots that had drawn me in the first place to find out more about her voyage. It’s a really good book!
I’m quite enjoying my deep dive into the world of classic knots. Now it’s time to start seeing how I can tie these ideas together with rock wrapping and see where it takes me! Maybe I’ll even make a little headway into Clifford Ashley’s massive tome. Or, you know, I could watch some videos! 😉
If you’d like to know more about rock wrapping, check out my book How to Wrap Rocks!