Hi Derek,
I wonder, have you 'simply' memorised the moves? ...
Not quite remember all the move.
For my few ventures in this sort of knots fiddling,
I just keep going one way or another, musing
"What if ...?!" and alas w/o someone videoing
me making various moves, I'll have no idea
what ones were good or dead ends!
E.g., I have many times transformed the "figure 9"
structure from its well-known (by climbers) "1 more
than 8" form --what garnered its name-- into either
of the symmetric forms (one of which is Ashley's #525,
btw); yet I STILL don't really know the moves, even
so simple & few. (Well, I can pretty well now get from
the asymmetric form to one of the symmetric ones,
viewing the former as a dancer w/joined arms
encircling a leg raised above head : bring the leg
& arms down, equalize straight_leg_&_wrapped_leg
to equally_trwisting_legs.)
I often found making equalities/derivations in math
like this : one has these rules for change, but had to
figure out how to do so in a productive order to get
from one equation to some other.
--dl*
====