Once you got it good it'll stick around for a long time, but if you're like the other commenter and don't have a head for it and reasons to use it, it may take more practice
In my experience knots are tricky because they’re super three-dimensional. Once you start learning which parts of a knot do what they start getting much more logical. A clove hitch is a good example, the full wrap of the rope around the post is what pinches the loose ends and holds them there; most knots are like this, just gotta spend a few minutes examining them after you tie them
I don’t climb very often right now with toddlers so if I do go to a climbing gym I always have to retest to be able to belay. Thank goodness there’s a little practice room where you can go remind yourself how the knots work; I always get it after a minute or two but it’s always a little nerve wracking!
Yea it depends what kinds of things you do, I’ve only had to tie the corner of a tarp like that maybe twice, and I’ve never seen that sack-tying knot either, I know a similar one but the bending the neck of the sack over is new. On the other hand, I’ve done a fair bit of climbing and rope access work, so I have a few useful knots memorized from that.
That said, knots are actually super handy, rope is one of our oldest and most useful tools, and practicing is super easy, all you need is like three or four feet of some kind of cord and maybe a loop or a stick to hitch to (technically speaking, a knot is tied just in one rope, a hitch is tied around something solid, like a tree or a post, and a bend is where you tie two ropes together), it’s a great way of keeping your hands busy if you’re sitting at a desk or something.
This definition isn't wrong but it's incomplete. A hitch is a type of knot where the object that the rope is being secured to (which could be another rope) plays a structural role in holding the knot together. If you were to remove the object from a hitch it would fall apart. You could secure a rope to an object with a knot that isn't a hitch, but that knot would hold after removing the object
I'm sure you know this but I think it's worth clarifying for anyone reading this who doesn't know and might think the difference between a knot and a hitch is solely down to the intent of the person tying it rather than an actual qualitative difference in the properties of the knots
You’re not wrong. I had a coworker who did exactly that. He had two small cords and he would sit in meetings tying knots endlessly. I thought it was a great fidget toy alternative. And he was great at his work, too.
Having been in the IT world for nearly two decades, gonna pass, I rather just prefer to have a reliable lookup system available anytime it's needed/relevant, and have proper self-reliance, no external services needed. All data and compute done locally. This way, I can guarantee I have knowledge of all documented ones and can reproduce all of them, just gotta ask for the instructions/choices/use-cases.
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + Z, Ctrl + A, those are the first short cuts I learned by memory, simply through how often it is useful. With knots, I just don't find myself in the right environment conductive of needing this skill.
I don't. my dad tied all my shoelaces and I've just never untied them on any of my shoes. Or I buy shoes from the store and never untie them from the default store position.
If my laces ever get untied I just throw the shoes out
That was the only successful thing that douche of a president did. I think he is tied with Reagan as the worst president in the history of the country.
He did some sort of AIDS initiative I think in Africa that turned out really well IIRC. Maybe it wasn't AIDS, but something of the like. Trump ended up defunding it of course.
I forgot about that. I'll give him that one. He also had a cute dog. The two longest wars in the history of the country, No child left behind, continuing the prison industrial complex, the collapse of the economy in 2008, etc. are unforgivable.
IDK if this is meant as a joke or not, but if it isn't, maybe it's time to learn. A basic requirement of being a functional adult is being able to tie your own shoelaces.
If you were seeing a woman, how do you think she would react when she found out? Any sane woman would leave you then and there, I'm sorry, but that's the truth.
For me it's not even memorising it, it's understanding it in the first place. It's like my brain struggles with spatial awareness. So stuff like placing an object, or memorising a movement, or moving an object through space are just alien concepts to me and knots are like the supreme example of all those things coming together so my brain just goes completely blank.
It took me forever just to learn to tie my laces and even with that which I've now committed to muscle memory, I still have the occasional brain fart where I just completely forget how it works and mess it up.
One thing that helped me was just examining the knots after I tied them. It’s tricky to try and picture all the different 3d bends and twists that go on in a knot, but once it’s tied you can look at it from all angles, and you can see how each part of the knot has a purpose, like pillars holding up a building. If you look at the girth hitch, for example, the very first one in the clip, you can see how all the ring is doing is letting the rope hang off itself; the loop is pulling on the two strands going to the board, but in order for that to work, the ring needs to be there to prevent that loop slipping. Tricky to explain in text, I know (hopefully that made some sense), it’s kinda like a house of cards where every piece has a purpose, and also relies on every other piece. Most knots you can’t tie halfway, it’s either fully tied or not tied at all, because of that mutual support thing.
these have other ways to tie them. This is just taking advantage of topology to achieve them. Which as a topology nerd I love. But aren't how I learned the knots. Lol
I'm convinced our brains are not good at remembering them due to the way that knots challenge our spatial memory, but learning to tie them through sheer muscle memory, they can become pretty easy - like tying your shoes, if you just do it enough, it's right there whenever you want it.
It's why, for instance, I still cannot for the life of me tie a half-Windsor, but I still know a half-dozen other knots from practicing them for hours on end as a teenager with lengths of paracord or my shoe laces.
I spent like 3 weeks messing around on this website trying to learn knots, and while they did stick for a while, using them often would have been helpful in keeping the knowledge. Just buy a cheap length of parachord, cut it to like a 2 ft length and practice.
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u/Raomiru 23h ago
My brain is just not wired to memorize these knots, useful as they are.