Dear IGKT
Congratulations on the website, the best forum entry layout I've ever seen.
We have been members for a year now on behalf of our 6 year old son Tim, who is fanatical about being a firefighter. His favourite games consist of cliffside rescues, emergency vehicles with sirens wailing, warehouse fires, and so on. Personally, I'm ok with this, it's better than Harry Potter or Power Rangers/Spiderman etc. I enrolled hoping to be able to teach him a few knots he could use, but we ran into some problems: ancient, mud-caked rope skipping rope does not knot well with ancient, mud-caked (used-to-be-one-inch-thick-but-it-stretched-a-lot) skipping rope. I have no idea about the difference between one nylon cord and another: they all slip when wet (these only see the inside of the house on their way between the front and back gardens) and in any case I'm doubtful that I can get to a source of what you would all consider decent rope anyway.
Can anyone recommend me a book which has knot headings such as "Use this for hauling your scooter to the top of the six-foot climbing frame", or "This one will make your skipping rope swing for sure", or "Fireman Sam would have used this one to rescue Naughty Norman when he got stuck on Pontypandy Mountain"? (He constructed the skipping rope swingat the top of the climbing frame when he was four: by the grace of God it held for about a week until I had to undo it. Next time, it didn't hold 20 seconds...)
The instructions have to be suitable for a six year old with an attention span ranging from "pout" to "I can't do that" to "I know" and running off to do what he only half-knows. I have seen Mr Budworth's Hamlyn Book of Knots, and Book of Decorative Knots (my 14 year old daughter liked a couple of those for her skoobie things) but in a family of five which home-educates and the youngest is 20 months, I don't get much time for really sitting down to learn myself.
Looking forwards to some encouragement and wisdom...
Regards, Glenys Chew (1 Corinthians 15:10 By the grace of God I am what I am)