A square knot undoes...

See the square knot....right over left, left over right (or left over right, right over left...same thing).

Take two adjacent tails and separate them.

Keep pulling.....WHOOPS, you now have two half hitches sliding along a single thread.

Square knots are not good under pressure, if the tail separates from its mate!

Granny bows have this problem, too, but they are even more likely to get into this state.

If you tie a third knot on top of a square knot, or a bow, it will have less of a tendency to come apart. For baby wearing, I tied a square bow (as opposed to a granny bow), and then tied the bow loops into a double bow.

Don't trust a square knot or a granny knot whenever you are wearing something that matters (like a mai tie or wrap). Use a bow on top, or fasten the tails to their mates in some seamanlike manner that will hold (in order for the square knot to fail, the adjacent tails must separate, so there are many hitches that will hold them together, that are easy to take out on purpose, but will not fall apart easily).

A new tallit

I'm working on a tallit for a girl in my Synagogue, whose Bat Mitzvah is approaching. Her dad bought my tallit making services at our fundraising auction...so now it's time.

It's going to be silk ribbon flowers, on a blue silk noile atarah. I'll make the corner reinforcements blue noile, as well. There be a single flower on each corner.

This is the design, from Inspirations Magazine that suggested the design and the flowers to use (well, I'll change them some)

But I don't like the grid...while I played around with my cutouts, I realized that a hex set up, 6 across, worked great! These flowers need to be upright, not scattered, as is my usual pattern...but clusters work!

Here is half of the basic pattern, you can see it inside the drawn lines for the atarah, about 4.5 inches high, 36 inches long.

These are the hexes of flowers. I'm using greens for the stems, not gold, since I'm not doing the grid, and I'll change the colors of the flowers themselves....a lot!

This photo is a bit dark...the blue is slightly lighter, and the corals are a bit lighter and pinker as well. Well, at least that is so on my screen!

I'll transfer the pattern tomorrow! This is going to be fun...I love the colors!