I've had the thought for a while that Inkscape would be great for illustrating knots. Today I decided to test that theory. After playing around a bit and discovering a nice workflow, I can report that it is indeed pretty nice for doing knot illustrations. Drawing the initial layout with the pen tool is simple, and cutting the path into pieces (so you can illustrate which part lays over another) isn't too bad. The toughest part is the step where you actually trim parts of the line so that you get the under-over effect. The reason it's difficult is because you have to kind of keep the layout of the knot in your head, and be careful that you only trim the right part. Maybe I'll write up a full tutorial on it.

Here's an illustration of one of my favorite knots, the butterfly loop. I like it because of the symmetry, and because once it's set, you can pull from either rope end or the loop itself and it won't slip.

Nice work. I would think that must have been tedious to create for the reasons you described. A tutorial would be great to see.

That's very cool. Man I remember the boy scout days when I had to memorize knots... That was tough stuff.

Oh wow! That's a lot like a project I'm working on. Only the one I'm making is a celtic knot -- you know, the kind that has no loose ends, all a continuous circuit. Can I ask in general, how did you do it? I don't need a lot of details, just curious to compare notes a little bit.

I copied mine from a webpage. Then of course I had to use the Trace Bitmap, to work on it in Inkscape. But rather than the knot being a stroke, the knot is an object, with a stroke of its own. I know I could freehand it, to make it a stroke, but I'm not so good with freehand stuff -- not exactly an artist

But I see that your knot has a stroke and fill, like mine. So it would seem you did it that way on purpose. Was that in order to show how the rope/string/whatever goes under and over itself? Very nice freehand work!

In the end, I'm thinking of not having a stroke at all, but use shadows and highlights, to make it look 3d, like a real cord or something. Maybe even using a pattern, for texture, to look like a bungee cord. That might prove to be too tedious though.

At the moment, I'm just trying to get the over- and under-laps to be sharp intersections. The Trace Bitmap kind of made blobs in the intersection areas. I'm also trying to make it as symetrical as possible. Maybe I'll post it, when it looks as good as your does, lol!