For the past few years I have been tying Chinese knots. I got started in 2005 because I wanted to tie "double happiness" knots to put on my wedding invitations.
The double happiness knot is a beautiful knot that is made up of 2 sets of 15 cloverleaf knots. I first saw the knot in the book Chinese Knots for Beaded Jewelery by Suzen Millodot. In order to learn to tie the knot I bought the book Chinese Knotting by Lydia Chen.
My first knot took me FOUR DAYS to complete and contained many mistakes. Here's a photo of that first practice knot in progress (I've already made a mistake connecting my cloverleaf knots!).
I kept at it and eventually I was able to learn to tie the knot and complete the 100 knots I needed for the wedding invitations (although even at my fastest, the knots took about four hours each to tie!).
When I designed my Hopping Ghost doll I was able to develop variations of traditional Chinese knots and incorporate them into his outfit.
I put a variation of a double happiness knot on his chest, a variation of a brocade ball knot on his hat, and compound knots made of two-loop cloverleaf knots for fasteners on his robes and boots.
The knotting detail of Hopping Ghost makes him one of my favorite dolls yet!