Susan, I'm years ahead of you with the idea of knotting floss,
though likely decades arrears if actual flossing usage is counted!
Yes, the wrap-around-fingers method is tedious; making a closed
circle/sling of floss (sparing us the ambiguity of "loop"!) is a better
way to go. But off the top of my head, I don't know what I used
-- would, like Sweeney/Barry, think first of an angler's knot, the Blood knot,
and like structures. (Okay, I just examined my tied floss-slings : too
fiddly tiny to tell much, but at least one
Blood knot is among
the set; and I also made a structure with eye knots at each end,
rather than a circle of floss; and also cannot figure out what eye
knot I used (back-2-back
Overhands should do the trick).
BUT, you might also try a combination --a main knot adding a stopper
to the ends : tie the
Offset Water knot (which I think is what
your hygienist did), and then tie a
Butterfly knot so that the knotted
ends are essentially the
Butterfly's eye. The knot should slip until
the OWKnot becomes flush against the other, slippage stopped.
And a similar tactic can be used back with the original knot tried,
viz., the
Offset Water knot (Overhand) -- tie a 2nd one right before
or behind the first, preventing the one loaded in offset oientation
from pulling out, as the other will jam against it (and in that
orientation it should not itself slip).
A circle-sling of floss allows one to put double strands of floss into
action, or to work two sides of a tooth at once.
- - - - - -
Might even give the surgeon's knot a go. It works for sutures.
One doctor advises me that surgeons in fact never use this knot!
(But knot books do.) However, in this case, the knot will transform
qua
bend into something that indeed might hold, but hardly as
surely as other knots.
--dl*
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