Endless Carrick Bend Dress

At ShibariCon, we taught a class on Karadas and Rope Dresses. You can see some of our designs in our Karadas and Rope Dresses Gallery. As a tribute to the Two Knotty Boys (TKB), we created a new dress for this year's class comprised of 24 doubled Carrick Bends.

Now the TKB make a distinction between the Carrick Bend (Ashley #1439) and their Double Coin Knot (#1428, which Ashley describes as just a variant form of the Carrick Bend). According to Chinese Knotting the Double Coin is the Chinese name for a sailor's Carrick Bend and the macramé Josephine Knot.

The two knots differ on where the working ends of the two ropes enter and exit the knot; indeed #1439 is a much stronger way to join two ropes than #1428. But this dress poses an interesting problem: how can you tell which knot is used if you can't find the ends?

To encourage people to come to our class on Sunday afternoon, Dee wore this dress to the ShibariCon play party on Friday night. She invited a small crowd of people to find the ends of the ropes in her dress. They examined her closely both visually and by touch, and were unable to find the ends.

So, which knot is it? See if you can tell...

[ For the humor impaired: I really love the Two Knotty Boys; they do fantastic work, share it graciously with the world, and are genuinely nice people while they do it. ]