2012 in review

Hi all.  Even though this last half of the year has been hectic to me, and haven’t been able to write as much on my blog during the last months, I wanted to share with you the WordPress Report for 2012.

This blog would not have been possible without all of you who read, comment, or recommend it!

I’d like to personally thank Louie Foxx, from the USA, for sharing some of my articles in his own blog, and Jean-Phillipe Ballant, from France, who is always reposting my articles through Facebook.  Thank you guys!

I hope my life settles down soon, in order to keep on with this blog and share my experiments and techniques and the like.

 

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Aldo.

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 15 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Mexican Chirrion XI

Some of the biggest disadvantages when using mecate for tying knots are:

• If it is a single strand, the fibers do not sit flatly and tend to unwind and change shape while going around when making a TH.
• If it is two-strand, then it tends to kink along the knot.

I had tried using techniques such as the “Fish Scale Braid”, Coxcombing, and the like.  In the end, they can be used, but the problem is that they are way too complicated for such a small section of the thong.

A Turk’s Head turned out to be the easiest and fastest way to do this.

A typical TH, a 5-part 4-bight, was tried onto the base of the thong. I write “typical”, because I assume most people get into making whips after David Morgan’s pattern, and that knot is characteristic of his famous design.  Well, it turned out too short and wide for the thong.  I noticed some of the whipping would show, so I had to choose a longer knot.

Then, I remembered that as the “overlay” of the whip was 3-strand, a 3-bight knot would be better to match that number.  It’s length was 8-part, and that  did the job.  I had to double-pass the mecate to cover the gaps formed.

Here’s the result:

 

2-pass, 8-part 3 bight Turk’s Head already rolled.

 

The knot shown between the loop and the thong

 

Now, I must figure out a way to finish off the cracker to prevent disrupting the taper the least possible.