That strikes a chord for me. In grade school my teachers could not distinguish between these perspectives, for the standard shoelace knot. I found their method stupid, and they thought my method was wrong. This was but one of many lessons that helped me to learn to think for myself.

  Years later I found out that my new knot was not new and that I had simply re-invented an existing knot, which appears elsewhere under two different names:

  “Double Slip Knot” (#1219) in “The Ashley Book of Knots” by Clifford Ashley;
  “Seaman's Shoelace Knot” (or “Seemännische Schuhbandschleife”), which appears in the German book “Knoten, Spleißen, Takeln” by Erich Sondheim.

Besides, I'm pretty sure Ian has done a lot more to spread the knowledge of this particular knot than anyone else in history.