Monkey's Fist Christmas Tree Ornaments...

Some more monkey fist Christmas tree ornaments. For the centers I've used ping pong balls, 1" and 1/2" wooden balls. The poly cord came from Walmart. These won't be going on our 3 foot tall fiber optic Christmas tree, so I'll probably be giving them away.

Free photo editing software...

I use Google's Picasa for editing my photos for this blog. It's free to use and really helps with improving the photos I've taken with my digital camera. They also have a 'Web Album' you can use to store your photos online in private or public albums.

I've gone through the grief of having a hard drive crash and losing lots of photos that weren't backed up or saved onto CDs/discs. So do yourself a favor and try Picasa, or others like Photobucket, Flickr, or Xanga for storing photos online, all free to use and access wherever you can get online.

Fender type paracord lanyard keychain fob...

Some of the knotty guys on a couple of forums made some crown sinnets and went back up over them with twists(half knots) and they looked pretty cool.  Reminds me of fender type rope/knot work, that I've usually seen done with hitching.
Here's one, with a Schmuckatelli skull bead, that I tried using coyote tan/desert camo paracord. It takes about twice as much cord to make, but can provide a beefier grip to a lanyard or keychain fob.

TAD Gear Folding Titanium Sporks...

TAD Gear Folding Titanium Sporks

And the lanyards are dishwasher safe too, lol. :P

Round sennit lanyard/fobs with black reflective and assorted colors of paracord...

A few round sennit knot lanyard/fobs made with black reflective paracord and assorted colors. And another photo taken with the flash to show the way the reflective paracord really does a great job at reflecting light.

A short 'How to' video I made on making a round sinnet paracord lanyard/fob

I used two pieces of gutted paracord, one 30 inches of black reflective paracord and the other 25 inches of red paracord. This will allow about a 3 inch loop and a 2 inch body when finished. Note: The difference in the round sinnet and the square sinnet is just in the angle used when weaving. If you want a square sinnet, you'll have solid colors on each side of the finished lanyard/fob, just weave straight across instead of at an angle. You can also combine them by doing a few angled, a few straight, and so on. My camcorder battery died just as I was finishing up with the lighter. After trimming the ends, hit them with the lighter to quickly melt them, and give a quick press with your thumb so they attach to the surrounding cord and won't come loose. Be careful though, it's easy to get burned. And there's no narration(just heavy breathing if you turn up your volume), but I think you'll get the gist of it.

These are some monkey fists that I made for use as Christmas tree ornaments. I used cord that I found at Walmart and used ping pong balls for the fists' centers.

It's easier and faster to learn the monkey fist when they're made larger(at least for me, YMMV). So if you want to learn, you might try it first with larger diameter rope/cord and use a ping pong ball, golf ball, racquetball, or tennis ball for the center until you get the hang of it.

 It took me one hour to make these five monkey fists, but making a smaller one with paracord or smaller diameter cord, using several turns, and adding a sinnet, twist, or cobra stitch could take an hour or more to make just one.

I've used various sized ball bearings, marbles, wooden balls, and even ping pong balls for the centers of the monkey fists I've made. You can find them on ebay or your local hobby/craft store. You can make the monkey fists without anything in the center or just use some wadded up paper or plastic if you don't have anything else handy.

Nalgene bottle paracord wrap

Here's my Nalgene bottle with the Brunton compass top. I've wrapped it with 37 feet of paracord using the common whipping method. If you keep it tight as you wrap, you won't have a problem with it slipping off, or wrap it with extreme tape first.

I believe it will hold 50 feet of paracord, but I just used what I had laying around. It can be removed in just a few seconds for quick use by pulling the bottom cord loose from the inner loop. If you wanted to get fancy with it, you could tie a turks head knot with many options of leads/bights to a pattern of your own choosing.