Animated Knots

Is this a very high quality website that simply tries to do one thing well and isn’t trying to monetize?!

I know it’s foolish but I want to daydream for a bit that the Web turned out differently. That at some point around Space Jam the people decided that a business being online was a deeply offensive invasion of Our space and would be boycotted, so they gave up on trying. And what was left was lots and lots of webpages like this among the personal pages and pages about nothing. And that services like search engines were provided by universities. And undergrads who attended would take their turn working for these services as a sort of community service rite of passage.

We have web rings and web rungs (more of a ladder topology) and nothing was for sale but the community would be fine with the occasional grandson selling meemaw’s knit scarfs. Oh, and Zombo Com was tolerated given its sheer breadth of utility.

I want to stay up well past my bedtime some summer night, finding some new web zone filled with a clever collection of someone’s identity they shared with the world. Maybe while a breeze gently wanders in through an open window and a train ventures forth in the distance.

As kind of a knot guy, unlike other commenters this is my #1 favorite knot site.

Other sites with animated 3D models might be useful for visualizing the topology of knots, or something. But for actually tying the knots I find this site and its curated photos much more practically useful. The fact that it's not literally animated is a feature; it shows the key stages you go through, rather than every detail.

And the photos are just clearer and better than any other resource. (If you look closely you'll see a lot of editing work has been done on them like to minimize the diff between consecutive photos.)

Only downside is that I wish it had more minor knots!

To anyone into knots, I recommend Knots 3D on Android. It is really handy because most people keeps the phone with them all the time. Beautiful and well maintained app. It's not overwhelming, in the sense that it doesn't try to add every existing knot in the same database, it has usage, which gives context, history and specially related knots, which makes it possible to compare different related knots that are usually used for the same thing.

I've got the Android app and love it, as well as Knots 3D.

Most knot enthusiasts will already know about it, but in the analog world The Ashley Book of Knots is fantastic. Beautifully illustrated; the author, Clifford Ashley, was a marine painter and spent decades documenting almost 4,000 knots.

How are more people not obsessed with knots?

It's the purest form of human creativity! It's nothing but a strait line and humans have figured out how to twist and turn it into a million different objects and endless uses. Our entire species has propelled itself into a realm of knowledge built on the fundamental twisting of a simple lines and observing those properties.

The clothes you wear are knots. Every surgery you have ends in knots. The combined effect of knots on our technology and understanding of the world is fascinating.

Only humans can see a rope, have a picture in their heads of what it should look like and then set forth on creating it. It's just such a precious nugget of what it means to be human and have the urge to fuck around with shit.

*by Grog!

This website was so useful for Boy Scout rank advancement.

I loved knots, lashings, plaits, braids, and splices as a kid, this really brought me back.

also this has been discussed on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=animatedknots.com

It seems to be a nice, handmade, thoughtful collection. Things like being able to flip the images is a nice touch.

However, name "animated" will only lead to disappointment for people finding slide shows of humans. This is basically the same kind of that a Boy Scout handbook provides.

And, for reference, one of the historical encyclopedias of knots is the ABOK.

https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots

What's missing from linear serialization of a book format like ABOK and this website is metadata tags that indicate each knot's attribute(s), i.e., bight, open, slip, etc. and an ability to browse and filter by such tag(s).

I wish I did scouting as a kid. Knot tying seems so fun and useful.

I love the idea of this site but have always been disappointed by the fact that it's more of a slideshow than actual animations. You have to do a fair bit of interpolation if you aren't experienced.