I discovered that for the entirety of my life I've been tying my shoelaces wrong. Or at least inefficiently. I'd been tying with the un-secure granny slip-knot. I learned a very simple and trivial adjustment to turn it into a more secure reef knot. How could I have missed this all these years? A slight study of the diagram reveals the simplicity and logicality of it. Perhaps I'm the type of person who has to understand something a bit more in depth before accepting it, at least with some things. I guess I had just found ways to cope with the un-secure way for so long I didn't have much desire to think about it.
But in a fit of frustration and a bit of luck, I have my answer. I have a pair of Timberlands with round slippery laces that tend to become undone constantly, causing me to double knot them. While on a trip, dear friend emilf tried to show me a more secure knot, but I didn't pay much attention to the difference. Well the difference was subtle and she did it quickly in my defense (plus maybe just a little I was too embarrassed to ask for a repeat demonstration). Even though in self-defensive denial I internally half-way balked, she was indeed correct. But no more! I have learned my lesson. 3 cheers for the reef knot lifehack. I have one less stress in my life. I can walk around in secure comfort that I will not be trodding on my laces (much) every again.
And on a related topic... does this happen to anyone?
With many of my laced shoes the tongue on my right foot tends to stay perfectly aligned in the toe to heel direction. But with my left shoe the tongue is always creeping towards the side. Even when I run my laces through the little sewn on fitting, ostensibly to help keep the tongue in its place, the tongue still moves to the side. But only on the left shoe.
My feet look fairly symetrical. My left foot is not oddly shaped. I wonder, does it have anything to do with this wive's tale that one of everyone's feet is a half size smaller than the other? I thought the shoe manufacturer's already took that into account. Maybe it's a universal prank by the shoe makers. (Again with the conspiracy.) This sounds like a question for Al Bundy.
I still insist my foot looks normal.
7 comments:
M, you have a flair for obsessing over the most insane subjects and writing about it in a most fascinating way.. GENIUS.
now you have my curiousity...
Can you teach me how to tie my shoelaces for Christmas????
"There is nothing too trivial..."
I constantly find myself repeating: "Nothing is too trivial to put on the Net."
A website on the various ways to tie one's shoelaces. Absolutely fascinating... Someone actually took the time to research, analyze, compare, and experiment with the dynamics of the shoelace knot. I was intrigued enough to grab one of my shoes so I could see if I'd been using the most efficient and effective knot. I'm happy to report mom taught me right with the reef knot. However, after browsing thru the site, I came across Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot. I liked this particular knot, and so, am going to give it a try. It adds perhaps a half a second to a full second to the time I normally alot for shoelace tying. However, with practice, this new knot will become second nature for me, and then slowly fade to one of those things I do on a regular basis, but don't even think about anymore.
I can't remember exactly when I learned how to tie my shoe laces. I remember it was mom who taught me. Dad was still active in the Navy and overseas. I remember being frustrated. Did I actually cry when I couldn't grasp the concept and motion of tying my shoelaces? I think I did cry...
RE: the tongue of the shoe slipping to the side. I have experienced it, but not in many many years. After some thought, I think there are many factors involved: type of shoe, whether your foot is bare or not, the way you walk, the weather, the general shape of your foot, the level of the arch, the length of your legs, the swinging of your arms as you walk, whether you smoke or not... But with so many variables, it's hard to pinpoint why the tongue slips for some and not for others...
Trivial or not, I now have a new respect for how I tie my laces.
hear here, screg, my good man! all these years i have been tying my shoelaces using the reef knot. TITT; when i was little, my evil stepfather taught me to tie them the granny knot way, and my laces were always coming undone. when the knot is in granny formation, i noticed that the knot seemed to "want" to twist into the more secure reef knot... so one day i tied them with the strings going in the direction it made more sense for them to go.
oooh, but now even my reef tying techniques are evolving! screg, ever since you showed me the ian knot, i've been practicing it and it looks damn good.. my biggest concern when you showed me was that i'd have difficulty untying my laces, because the ian knot is so secure. but no! it seems to come apart with little resistence. muchos gracias, mi amigo! who would've known one could learn to tie their shoelaces in a more efficient manner on a worknight at a friend's house? who eats raw meat?! well learned AND a taunter of food poisoning? life is full of surprises now, ain't it? :)
no, i'm not on drugs...
hey! let's start a knot club!
damn, should've been a shipmate. i'd a been the best knotter chick for leagues. and have a potty mouth, which would've sucked balls in picking up guys...
btw, totu, tanks for the props...
oh yes! the tongue thing!
that sounded funny...
anyhoo, i think, totu, you're problem lies in your...... laces, hee hee!
i think that you are quite possibly not tying them tight enough, thus leaving "shifting room" for your tongue.
ok, following the example of dear ronin, i'm going to look it up...
be back in a few!
omg. went surfing... hmmm... tongues of shoes shifting and this is what i come back with:
i read about making my own combat boots, paying special attention to the method in which i cut the ti=ongues fo my new homemade boots, as well as the size, so that the tongues don't shift...
i read numerous complaints about shoes with shifting tongues, but no solutions to the problem...
i read way too much about pete sampras and one of his rivals, greg Rusedski, "who turns 29 on Sept. 6, is the quintessential Virgo. With bananas placed neatly on the chair next to him and bottles of Evian equidistant from each other near his feet, the left-handed serve-and-volley specialist is the Nomar Garciaparra of men's tennis, a perfectionist who constantly fidgets on the court. He spends so much time straightening his shoe tongues and pulling up his socks that during the match with Sampras one fan finally admonished him saying, "Hey Greg. Leave the socks alone."
yeah, that was a cut and paste... i finally decided to go back to the beginning and email ian with his knot thingy site... hopefully he'll reply to my email with something good and we can straighten this out once and for all! :)
OK, so ian emailed me back. this is his reply:
Hey, Melissa;
Thanks for taking the time to e-mail me about your experiences with my Shoelace Site. Obviously you gained something from your visit, so that's terrific.
You wrote:
> for years i have used the "reef" knot, and recently showed a friend
> of mine how to tie his shoes that way. (he was going with the
> granny knot, and it was slowing us down on our trip).
I'm glad that I'm not the only one trying to spread the word about this simple, yet life-changing, piece of knotting knowledge.
> ... wow! i really like the ian knot! it's pretty cool!
Ahh, another success - congratulations on learning it!
> ... why the tongues of his shoes tend to slip to the side of his
shoe.
Someone else asked me this same question fairly recently. Here's what I wrote to them:
I've had this on one or two pairs of shoes. It's really annoying! When you realise that not all shoes do this, it demonstrates that this is a failing of those particular shoes.
My guess is that it has something to do with the ability of the tongue to follow the two curves of the top of your foot. It must curve downwards on the left and right as well as upwards at the front and back. One curve tries
to undo the other, and if the material is not shaped to allow this, the result is that the material will find a way to stay flat. This causes it to move off the curved upper part of the foot and sit flat along the side of the foot.
So much for the analysis; the solution can often be found on the
tongue.
Many shoe tongues have either a small flap, groove or other means of threading the lace through to secure it at the top of the foot. For example, the grey Puma runners pictured in all my lacing diagrams has a "Puma" label on the flap that's stitched only on the top and bottom, leaving open sides
through which the laces can be passed. Mostly this is designed to allow "Criss Cross Lacing" to line up correctly, but if the gap between the sides of the shoe is narrow, it may work best with "Over Under Lacing", or at
least to run just the section holding the flap as an "Under" crossover.
If your flaps don't have any built-in means of securing them, I've seen many instances where people have improvised by cutting two parallel vertical slits in the upper layer of material or by sewing on a flap. It's up to you
whether this would destroy the appearance more than having the tongue sit crooked.
As to whether any particular lacing would help, I doubt it. I can see that it's possible that the vertical underlying sections of Straight Fashion Lacing could hold the sides of the tongue, but only if the tongue was narrower than the eyelet spacing, which it never is. Therefore, unless the
tongue has any of the above restraints, the lacing won't do much to hold the tongue, regardless of where it runs.
Hope this helps!
Have a great day, and keep up the good work of spreading this shoelace knowledge.
Ian Fieggen ;-)
Alright, re: sliding tongues; when you buy your next pair of shoes, shop for ones in which the tongue is connected to stretchy straps which are sewn to the soles. Can you picture it? Along both sides of the tongues are stretchy straps that hold the tongue fairly center.
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