Tying Shoelaces

For more than twenty years I thought I knew how to tie my shoelaces, but I didn’t.

Looking back, it’s bizarre. Because I was tying them wrong, they often came undone. I didn’t think to work out why, and nobody thought to tell me.

Then somehow—I don’t remember why—I ended up at this wonderfully informative website:

Ian’s Shoelace Site

The classic mistake is to tie what’s called a “granny knot”: this is what happens when you tie one half of the knot in the wrong direction, and the whole thing ends up skewed and insecure as a result.

Granny Knot

> I believe that up to half the population may be tying their shoelaces incorrectly. I spot people everywhere with tell-tale crooked shoelace bows – on the street, in newspapers and magazines and on TV.

Mystery solved! Tie it correctly—flip one half of the knot—and it’s much less likely to come undone. Great!

Better Still

But, why not go further?

So far this was the simplest knot and a wrong way of tying it—Ian’s site describes 25 different knots.

After a small amount of experimentation I settled on this one:

Surgeon’s Shoelace Knot

And my laces have been 100% secure ever since.

It’s not often you learn something you’ll use every day.

Bonus

I learned another thing that’s of practical day to day value.

If a pair of laces is “too long” for a pair of shoes—meaning there is too much lace left over so that it tends to drag on the floor—there’s an easy solution. Simply replace the shoe using a pattern that consumes more of the lace.

For example:

Spider Web Lacing

This lacing pattern looks nice and consumes an extra 11% of shoelace length.

That’s All, Folks

Happy lacing!

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