The Chinese Knotting Home Page

中國結, 中国结, 전통매듭, 花結び

What's New

Tue Feb 17 23:37:47 PST 2026

TL;DR: excuse the mess, it should get better quickly?

The last time I "officially" changed anything on this site was in 2010. It's not that I was inactive or gave up on knots. I taught over 6 online courses and generating hours of video and many pages of instructions. I also posted many things to Instagram. I was not even inactive here. I reworked and rewrote this site at least 3 times. Each time was not good enough, though. I stopped myself from publically updating the site because it would be better to just leave it alone than put out something that was imperfect. Each year I would resolve to "get it right" and then get it out. At new years or xmas, more recently World Knot Tying Day. Usually Chinese New Year. Target deadlines came and went. Time flew by like leaves in autumn. So it is that this year I drew an arbitrary line in the sand and decided that no matter the current state of the site, I would put it out for CNY. I would leverage the unmitigated shame of having this horrific mess out in public to make myself make progress, rapidly?

On the bright side, I have made this site so out of date and irrelevant that maybe one or two of you will notice the atrocity before I fix it. 😅🤣🫣😱😓🤪

more...

If you buy ye large tome of knots you'll generally find (along with all the sailing, climbing, and fishing knots) a section marked "decorative knots" (or fancy or ornamental). Contained therein are largely Chinese knots.

Chinese knots are, for the most part, two cord lanyard type arrangements where 2 cords enter from the top of the knot and 2 cords leave from the bottom. The knots are usually double-layered and symmetrical.

Lydia Chen lists 11 basic knots of Chinese Knotting in her first book. They are: the 4 Cloverleaf Knot, the 6 Cloverleaf Knot, the Chinese Button Knot , the Double Connection Knot, the Double Coin Knot, the Sauvastika Knot, the Cross Knot, the Square Knot, the Plafond Knot, the 2x2 Mystic Knot, and the Good Luck Knot. While these are some of the most commonly used knots in Chinese knotting, my definition of basic is something else altogether.