Other sites with animated 3D models might be useful for visualizing the topology of knots, or something. But for actually tying the knots I find this site and its curated photos much more practically useful. The fact that it's not literally animated is a feature; it shows the key stages you go through, rather than every detail.
And the photos are just clearer and better than any other resource. (If you look closely you'll see a lot of editing work has been done on them like to minimize the diff between consecutive photos.)
Only downside is that I wish it had more minor knots!
If you want to learn just one new, very convenient knot, which can be used in many situations, I recommend the Bowline [2].
https://www.animatedknots.com/shoelace-bow-knot-fieggen-meth...
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
It’s a great knot to get other people interested, too, because you can go “alright, so first you start in this position like any other knot, right? Then you just zwoop and done”. Tying your laces in a single fast movement really makes your nerd friends curious. It’s like a magic trick.
I donated today because his site is worth supporting.
[1] https://www.animatedknots.com/shoelace-bow-knot-surgeons
https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots
What's missing from linear serialization of a book format like ABOK and this website is metadata tags that indicate each knot's attribute(s), i.e., bight, open, slip, etc. and an ability to browse and filter by such tag(s).
Most knot enthusiasts will already know about it, but in the analog world The Ashley Book of Knots is fantastic. Beautifully illustrated; the author, Clifford Ashley, was a marine painter and spent decades documenting almost 4,000 knots.
One of the cool aspects of knots for this audience is that they have a unix-like aspect where multiple individually-useful knots can be "piped" together, the example I like to use is the Trucker's Hitch:
https://www.animatedknots.com/truckers-hitch-knot
(which also can be tied in multiple ways, depending on which knots you combine to make it)
Yup. Referring to knots by their ABoK numbers is also more practical than by their wildly varying names.
It's the purest form of human creativity! It's nothing but a strait line and humans have figured out how to twist and turn it into a million different objects and endless uses. Our entire species has propelled itself into a realm of knowledge built on the fundamental twisting of a simple lines and observing those properties.
The clothes you wear are knots. Every surgery you have ends in knots. The combined effect of knots on our technology and understanding of the world is fascinating.
Only humans can see a rope, have a picture in their heads of what it should look like and then set forth on creating it. It's just such a precious nugget of what it means to be human and have the urge to fuck around with shit.
The space robot you send to another planet utilizes knots: https://www.planetary.org/articles/20120905-knots-on-mars
"It might surprise most people to learn that multitudes of knots tied in cords and thin ribbons have probably traveled on every interplanetary mission ever flown. If human civilization ends tomorrow, interplanetary landers, orbiters, and deep space probes will preserve evidence of both the oldest and newest of human technologies for thousands, if not millions of years.
Knots are still used in this high-tech arena because cable lacing has long been the preferred cable management technique in aerospace applications. That it remains so to this day is a testament to the effectiveness of properly chosen knots tied by skilled craftspeople. It also no doubt has a bit to do with the conservative nature of aerospace design and engineering practices. Proven technologies are rarely cast aside unless they no longer fulfill requirements or there is something substantially better available."
Knots as code, code as knots: https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2107
In fact, the words are etymologically linked, they’re really just the same word! See https://www.etymonline.com/word/knit
> knit(v.)
> Old English cnyttan "to tie with a knot, bind together, fasten by tying," related to Old Norse knytja "bind together, form into a knot," Middle Low German knütten "to tie, knot," Old English cnotta "a knot," from Proto-Germanic knuttjan, from stem knutt-. Of brows, late 14c. Intransitive meaning "do knitting, weave by looping or knotting a continuous thread" (especially in reference to plain stitch) is from 1520s.
These first two links talks about a knit being a series of knots - slip knots specifically. The other two suggest a knit is a very long knot.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190519004510/https://www.nytim...
https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~rlg131/topology_and_knitting...
https://mathemalchemy.org/2021/03/04/knots-trivial-and-other...
https://iwoolknit.com.au/blogs/news/the-science-of-knitting-...
I know it’s foolish but I want to daydream for a bit that the Web turned out differently. That at some point around Space Jam the people decided that a business being online was a deeply offensive invasion of Our space and would be boycotted, so they gave up on trying. And what was left was lots and lots of webpages like this among the personal pages and pages about nothing. And that services like search engines were provided by universities. And undergrads who attended would take their turn working for these services as a sort of community service rite of passage.
We have web rings and web rungs (more of a ladder topology) and nothing was for sale but the community would be fine with the occasional grandson selling meemaw’s knit scarfs. Oh, and Zombo Com was tolerated given its sheer breadth of utility.
I want to stay up well past my bedtime some summer night, finding some new web zone filled with a clever collection of someone’s identity they shared with the world. Maybe while a breeze gently wanders in through an open window and a train ventures forth in the distance.
> The Ashley Book of Knots is an encyclopedia of knots written and illustrated by the American sailor and artist Clifford W. Ashley. First published in 1944, it was the culmination of over 11 years of work. The book contains 3,857 numbered entries and approximately 7,000 illustrations.[1] The entries include knot instructions, uses, and some histories, categorized by type or function. It remains one of the most important and comprehensive books on knots.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knots
There is some duplication/variations in that count, e.g.:
> ABoK #176, #355, #364, #430, #1188, #1189, #1249, #1250, #1251, #1252, #2052, #2097, #2489, #2560, #3441, #3700, #3853
I particularly like the comparison between similar knots that helps you understand when one is better than the other.
If you wrap it around a pipe or tube using a cow hitch or prusik, it creates an eyelet that is as reliable as if it were welded in place, but is also easily moved by loosening it slightly. On bicycle tours I use them to create ad hoc eyelets on my racks which make lashing oddly-shaped things on the rack easier. They also work great for converting a small diameter eyelet into a larger one.
However, name "animated" will only lead to disappointment for people finding slide shows of humans. This is basically the same kind of that a Boy Scout handbook provides.
I also have read their backstory/naming thing [1] several times but I still don't quite get it. I first thought they were related to the historical Grog, but that was a misunderstanding. I think.
I learned that knot differently, and wonder if mine has a different name.
This website was so useful for Boy Scout rank advancement.
Knots seem like boring and obscure useless knowledge from a time long gone, but since gaining an interest in them as a result of getting into bushcrafting, I'm shocked at how often knots come in handy even in day-to-day life. When I was a boy scout, and I was doing my knot merit badge, they did not put any effort into demonstrating the use cases of the knots they taught us. If they had, I'd have been hooked then. Took over a decade before I revisited it and realized how cool knots are.
A skill I will definitely be teaching my boys in a more practical way when the time comes.
also this has been discussed on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=animatedknots.com
Here's one US Marines use (pdf):
https://web.archive.org/web/20170516214745/https://www.marso...
