Pan Chang Knot

Day 336: In between quilting (which is to say, when I'm not sewing blocks of the DWR or applying the binding to Scrappy Stars or hand-quilting the Kittygons), I needed something to rest my fingers, eyes and painful shoulder, and I thought I might take a look at Chinese knotting. It's a logical extension of macramé and marlinespike work, i.e., one more way to fiddle string or rope into something attractive. After watching several YouTube videos...watching, mind you, because I don't understand Chinese...I finally found one which was not only easy to follow, but gave instructions in English. It took me half an hour to create my first Pan Chang in 2mm satin rattail, and I only pulled the wrong loop a few times, knowing from hours with a marlinespike how easy it is to mistake the standing end from the working end when you're trying to identify the direction of travel in the center of a complicated knot. This is not to say that Pan Chang is a particularly difficult knot to tie. It looks complex, but the tying is relatively straightforward. Tightening it up to give loops of the correct sizes, however, is another story and takes a healthy dose of patience. You might think that working with larger cord would make the knot easier to tie, but in fact the bumps in the cotton rope made it harder to adjust. The Pan Chang knot is said to bring good fortune to those who display it.