The Helava Knot

This Instructable demonstrates how to tie a novel necktie knot.

I decided to tie my tie this way the morning before an interview a few years ago. I looked around online, and couldn't find any documentation of a similar knot. I've never seen anyone do this before, so I figure I can give it a name. If anyone out there's seen this, and it has a proper name, I'd love to hear it.

The thing I like about this knot is that the lines on the tie (if you're *very* precise about it) echo the angle of your collar.

This knot starts out a little strange. Instead of moving the big end around, like you're used to doing, you'll be mostly manipulating the short end. You want the long end to come down to about an inch or three above the top of your pants.

When you pull the knot tight, you'll be pulling on the wide end, so you'll end up with a slightly longer tie than you start with. It looks *really* short in the photo, but it turned out just about right.

Starts simple. You want the seam towards you when you lay the tie out. Take the skinny end, and cross it over *in front* of the wide end. Then take the skinny end, and pull it back around the back of the wide end to the side you started from.

Now back over to the other side. There's an optional step here, but you have to have a really long tie. Just loop the short end back around the wide end to thicken the knot. If your tie isn't really long, skip the extra loop.

Now, take the short end, and pull it up and under the right side of the ... uh... neck loop.

You don't actually have to stick the skinny end in your nose now. I just wanted to show you what the thing looks like so far.

This, hopefully, isn't like the step where someone's teaching you to draw Garfield, and they say, "Draw a circle, then another circle. Now add detail. Voila! Garfield."

Take the skinny end, which you didn't stick up your nose, pull it back down to the outside, around the back, and then up around the front of the left side of the neck loop.

Here's where it *actually* gets a little tricky. So, in the photo, you can see that the short end is going over the left side of the neck loop. It's now gotta go through something to hold it in place. If you feel around the back of the knot, there should actually be a place to stick the short end. You'll end up basically going through two loops.

In the second picture, it looks like one loop, but it's not. If I can figure out a way to document this better, I'll take another picture and post it. But just poke around back there. There is a way to get that skinny end through.

So, yeah - that's the short end. It's really short. I honestly don't really know how this knot can take up so much fabric, but not actually be huge. Okay - I do know - it's that you end up wrapping a lot of the tie around the "edges" of the knot, and not in the center of the knot itself. So it looks sort of normal sized.

Next, shuffle the short end back behind the big end, and you're pretty well finished.

Now, just tighten. Grasp the knot gently with one hand, and pull gently on the wide end of the tie with the other. If you overtighten the knot, it looks sort of ridiculous, so just get it to the point where it's snug but not all bunched up.

Thereyago.

Most people won't notice, or care. But if you've gotta wear a tie, might as well do something interesting.

As for that interview? I got the job. I don't think it was the knot that got me the job, but it was at a place where a little bit of creative thinking makes a big difference, so who knows. Maybe it was the thing that pushed me over the edge, maybe they didn't notice at all.

Good luck!