Shoe laces come untied. Kids will get their bows secured by tying the 'rabbit ears' in a knot on top of the bow. The problem with double tying shoes is that you can't pull the free end to untie the laces.

Here is a knot that you can use every day that will improve your life - if you have shoe laces.
When tying your shoes, go around the 'rabbit ear' gripped between thumb and index finger twice instead of once. Simple. Much more secure and it can be untied with a firm pull on the free end. This seems to be the online version: Ian's Shoelace Site - Better Bow Shoelace Knot though this description seems harder than when I do it. The site has many cool ways of tying your shoes.

http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/IanKnot16.gif

more like vises in the shop.

Wow. Kinky.

Anyone ever tie a knot hole?

I thought it but dare not say

OK, so this thread got me going on knots.

I was curious about what a bunch of Internet knot folks thought were the most useful, most basic, most need-to-know knots, so I did a search and found a few threads including one on the International Guild of Knot Tyers Forum - Index (these guys are hard core). I went through all of the posts and put the knots in excel and counted the number of hits on each. For some, like the bowline, there are several variations, and I put those in just as the "bowline". I figure if you learn how to tie a bowline, then the variations shouldn't be too hard to remember/learn.

The list is about 80 knots. Here are the top 15ish in order from most often mentioned to least often mentioned. What I found interesting is that a bunch of the knots that knot folks seem to value aren't knots that I'd ever learned or heard of in the boy scouts. I've seen the figure 8 knot a hundred times, but never knew it was a knot. It seems to find it's way into hoses and extension cords a lot. I guess it's easy to end up with a figure 8 knot if you mess with coiled lengths of stuff (hose, cord, rope, etc...)

bowline (includes water bowline, double bowline, bowline on a bight, etc...)
figure 8 (there are also several variations of this one including a bend and a loop. )
alpine butterfly (bend and loop)
square (funny, since the square knot seems to be generally frowned upon)
clove hitch (same here, like the square, this knot is the jack of all trades master of none)
constrictor knot (I didn't learn this in the boy scouts, but this is a good knot)
truckers hitch
sheet bend
zeppelin bend
double fishermans bend (prusik)
overhand (includes the double overhand, slip, etc....)
tautline hitch
half hitch
carrick bend
adjustable grip hitch
buntline hitch
timber hitch


I came across this video and thought it was pretty cool. I like the quick method for tying the bowline.

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6EyfYyJkZss" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Beautiful stuff Joe Bob. At a functional level, if you cant tie a bowline, a reef, a half hitch and a truck hitch (or what ever they are properly called-for tying down loads)- hand in your man card I reckon.

I wear slip-ons and flip-flops just so I don't have to tie knots ....