The Square Knot

2019-12-31T18:38:37Z

TIL how to tie my shoes 😐.

I figured this out today – the last day of 2019 – while I was tying together two ends of cotton sash cord to make a loop. I suddenly noticed my square knot didn’t look like the cover of the Boy Scouts knot book.

I looked up the square knot on animatedknots.com – which is an amazing site with step-by-step instructions for all kinds of knots. Sure enough, I had been doing wrong – left-over-right, left-over-right – a granny knot vs a square knot.

Loose Granny Knot

Loose Square/Reef Knot

This was satisfying, if a little embarassing – I somehow made it through Cub Scouts without learning to tie a square knot. As I kept reading animatedknots.com I learned something else:

The Square (Reef) Knot […] is usually learned when we tie the laces on our first pair of shoes. Admittedly it is usually a bow that we tie – but the underlying knot is a Square (Reef) Knot.

I quickly untied and retied my shoes – left-over-right, left-over-right – damnit – a granny knot. It’s especially frustrating given that I’d seen Ian’s Shoelace Site’s page on Granny Knots forever ago and dismissed it because my shoelace bows weren’t askew.

So here I am – a living cautionary tale. It’s the last day of 2019. I’m 33. And I just learned to tie my shoes 🌠.

Tyler Cipriani: pages tagged knots

The Square Knot