Star knot with 4 ends

When you make this knot the first time, use a worktop with a hole, and put the stem of the knot in the hole. This knot has to be made on a stem. Tie your strings together, or tie a couple of crown knots before you start with the star knot. It helps a lot to work with ends in different colours, if you do knot have special string in different colours, use shoelaces (strings). They are available in many colours, if you just use them to learn new knots, or try things, they will last for years. And in the factory they have finished the ends better than you ever can yourself. For your first try you should take fairly long strings. If you want the bigger drawings click here for the other version.
	Place your strings on your worktop, spread them as the spokes of a wheel. If you haven't done the crown knot for a while do it now, several times, it helps a lot. Start with any string you like, as long as you use every string in every phase of the knot. The sequence I use in the drawings works the best. Make a little loop in the first string by passing it under itself. Repeat with the second string and get the end of the first string through the loop. Repeat with all the strings, the end of the last string goes through the loop of the first string.

	When you have done this, tighten a little, you should be able to put a finger in the loops, not all your hand. To make the next phase easier to view, I changed the colours in the drawings. Tie a crown knot on top of the knot you have, against the direction you work.

	Tighten a little, again. Take a string, in the drawings I used red, and go with a loop, in the first direction of work, underneath itself, follow the string beside it and go through the same loop that one goes. Repeat with all strings. The next string you use is the next one against the direction you work. You will notice that the 3rd string goes through 2 loops and the last goes underneath two strings as well. Maybe you want to hold the knot in your hand in this phase already.

	Turn the knot over and this is what you should see. The knot is sturdy enough not to need a table anymore. (If not, you work to loose.) Like in the last phase you follow alongside the string you are beside, remember to stay at the inside of the knot. Tuck the string through the little hole you will find and at the top it should exit the hole in the middle of the knot. If your knot is nice and tight you may want to use a pair of pliers or a hairpin, to use them, go into the hole in the top of the knot and than through one of the four little holes, feed your string into the your tool and pull. The last string will not go as easy, you may have to pull the first one out a little.

	This is the knot on the top again, the little coloured spots stand for the strings. If you use this knot as an in-between knot you are finished, if you use it as a final knot you better tuck the strings another time. For the last tuck, the string comes from the centre of the knot, take it to the edge, in the drawing I gave it a black spot, go underneath the outer strings, (they were the loops in phase 1 and 2, and under the strings at the bottom, in the one but last drawing I made the path with black dots, to end near the stem of the knot, the black squares in the last drawing.

Tighten this knot in several phases. Start with pulling out all the slack per phase, so you start with pulling the first loops out a little. (They are the bottom ones now.) Next you pull the slack to the crown knot, the outer stripes in the drawings,) and than the second set of loops, (the top ones,) and so on till there is nothing left to pull on. If all the knot is still loose, repeat it. If there are only a few loose loops left you may pull one string at the time all the way through. When the strings are tight you may cut them here or you can bring them through the knot a last time and use them as a tassel. An other possibility is working around the stem or untying the stem and working with 8 strings from here on.

©Willeke 2002