zlacker

Ah! This page was on the front page of somethingawful a good ten years ago. At the time I had shoes with particularly slippery laces, so I started using Ian's Secure Knot, and never looked back: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm

>>sbierw+(OP)
I can also highly recommend this shoelace knot.

>>sbierw+(OP)
I think I've used this one as well for about 7 or 8 years. I can recall an accidental untie exactly once. It's also fantastic because it makes for a much more symmetric, shapely knot.

>>sbierw+(OP)
Oh interesting! I've used the Ian knot for about 10 years now and hadn't even considered looking for anything else.

Quite a lot of sailing has given me a good appreciation of knots. It's amazing how (when you're doing a lot of rope work) you can get a real instinctive sense of the pressures on a knot and how to create the best knot for the situation. In ocean racing there are places you have unusual needs (like tethering the running backstays to the cars while you adjust the angles).

Believe it or (k)not, there a branch of mathematical topology dedicated to knot theory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_theory

http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

>>sbierw+(OP)
I learned about, and kind of use a variant of, the secure knot from this site starting from a number of years ago. I find that I'm lazy and it's easier for me to loop one bunny ear twice over (asymmetrically) rather than both ears once each (symmetrically). Old habits means that I'm used to using my left hand to loop the ear and then my right hand to pull it taut.

Maybe I'll try to do it symmetrically more often.