Has anyone else tried Pekin Knots (also called China Knots, but not to be confused with Pekingese Stitch apparently)? I decided to stretch myself a bit into more crewel work – I’ve done a bit before, but that was mostly pretty basic stuff and not really pushing it. But I’ve got a grafitti project on the go at the moment and decided this might be just the time to try some new stuff. Flicking through the little Anchor Book of Crewelwork Stitches, I found the Pekin knot combined with some padded satin stitch and thought that would work well.

And it didn’t really look any worse than a French knot after all and French knots REALLY aren’t bad, no matter what kind of reputation they’ve got.

Maybe it’s because I’m doing it all in cotton floss instead of crewel wool but I am battling with each and every one of these little suckers. It knots too tightly around the tail and then I can’t get the tail through, so there I sit with needle and laying tool trying to get it apart again so that I can get the tail between the stitches of an even length and tension. They’re driving me insane. I CAN do knots (although I’m not particularly eager to spend large amounts of time with bullion knots again anytime soon) but this guy has got me stumped.

Anyway, only a few centimeters left, that’s all, then I can leave this knot behind me.