Page 310 - J. C. Turner "History and Science of Knots"

Trembles 301

series of tucks. Starting with the Reef Knot or the Square Knot he could
proceed, without completely untying and retying, through six other bends to
finish with a Double Carrick. He wrote: `... the eight Bends ... pass, each into
the next, by a slight change in the lay of the strands.'
Fig. 1(a)-(h) depicts Shaw's series. He labelled the knots:
(a) Square Knot (b) Weaver's Knot
(c) Half Granny (d) Granny
(e) Single Carrick (f) Double Carrick 1
(g) Half Carrick (h) Double Carrick 2
Today many knot tiers would call both (e) and (g) half Carricks, (f) a single
Carrick, and (h) a full Carrick-ends opposed, i.e. emerging on both sides of
the knot.
Anyway, try it for yourself. All you need is a couple of lengths of cord.
I use flexible braided stuff about 7mm diameter (that's about one inch in
circumference), and it helps if each bit is a different colour. But anything
easily manipulated will do.

Desmond Mandeville, O.B.E., M.A., F.R.I.C.

In the late 1960s a retired organic chemist in London , England, was concocting
a knotted alphabet, each letter from A to Z represented by a knot (for vowels)
or a bend (for consonants). It was mere whimsy-done for fun; a childish code
to pass a secret message. The knots represented words and sentences tied in a
piece of string. Desmond Mandeville called it his Alphabend [2] (Fig. 2). And
he contrived the knot names (ignoring vowels) to make, when read aloud in
alphabetical order, a rhyming mnemonic:
A
the Barrel Knot
the Carrick
the Drawbend Double

E
the Fisherman's
the Granny
the Hubble Bubble

I
the Jinx
the Kilkenny