Shelley Howells: Many ways to get knotted with a myriad of quirky sites on internet

We've been tied up in knots over the past few days. Thanks to a session with the local Sea Scouts, the seven-year-old became fixated on knots.

It's been a couple of decades since I whipped together bowlines, half-hitches and their associates to lash schoolmates to stretchers and lower them from second-storey windows during school Civil Defence lessons, so I turned to the web for a refresher course.

Once again, I discovered a whole world I hadn't known existed.

There are people out there who are devoted to knots. And they are not seven-year-olds. There are mathematical knot theorists, knot videos and software, knot art, knot discussion boards and even an "International Guild of Knot Tyers".

The guild web site's beginners' section gives a good backgrounder on sorting your knot from your bend, hitch and splice, as well as some nice simple diagrams (and explanation of the uses) of the kind of knot that causes great fascination in small boys, such as the figure of eight and clove hitch.

The site also tells us that, although the New Zealand chapter of the guild is small, it is a force to be reckoned with: the patron is a guild vice-president, their first president is "an authority on the history of knotting and cordage" and members have made bell ropes for Kiwi frigates and for the New Zealand America's Cup team.

The most wide-ranging and best-organised knot site I found was Peter Suber's Knots on the Web, a vast collection of knotting resources. You can find out how to tie anything from knots for animal-handling, to climbing and caving, neckties, sailing, scouting and surgical knots.

There's even a section for the knot-phobic, "Not Knots", on products (such as those twisty shoelaces) that help people to avoid knots entirely.

Here is where I discovered that the world record (for tying the six Boy Scout Handbook knots on individual ropes) is an incredible 8.1 seconds, and it's been held by one Clinton R. Bailey snr, of Pacific City, Oregon, since 1977. Apparently, nobody has even come close to equalling that time since, and the site's creator has much to say on this knotty problem, including a "proposal for regulating the world knot-tying speed record".

In the end, despite all the great sites we found, it was an old-fangled $7 book from a bookshop bargain bin that was the most practical to use (I'm far too cheap to print off all those online diagrams). Another case of the net being less useful than it looks, but full of quirky interest.

Speaking of quirky, thinking back to those school Civil Defence sessions, in which we dangled teens from great heights and clambered over school rooftops in fetching boilersuits and orange hardhats, it occurred to me that, in these safety-conscious times, such potentially dangerous (not to mention terminally nerdish) activities would probably need a hundredweight of parental waiver form-filling before even being discussed.

This lead me to the Occupational Safety and Health web site, where I became waylaid and transfixed by the great quirkiness - and tremendous stomach-churning effects - of Dr Aargh's Little Workshop of Horrors. Part of their "kidz" section is an A-to-Z of workplace nasties, from "Amputation" to "Zoonoses".

It not only includes vivid descriptions of horrible fates ("The last thing you remember is the flash and the feeling of your lungs filling with fire. When you regain consciousness, you're in the hospital's burns unit. Lucky to be alive, they tell you. But in the months to come, as the plastic surgeons take skin from your back to rebuild your face, you may wonder whether you were lucky to survive"), but photographs of victims. There is a warning about the graphic nature of some of the photos, but this compelled me to look. And regret.

It certainly had me checking over my workplace for hazards.

First to go must be the double-plug, dual-plugboard, eight-plug low-tech computer wiring system. Then there's the 20kg of paperwork and books due to drop on my head at any moment and the potentially flammable pile of chippie and chocolate wrappers hidden behind the monitor.

According to OSH, as a self-employed person, I am required to take all practicable steps not to harm myself or harm other people while I am at work.

"This includes co-workers, visitors and passers-by." I trust that doesn't include readers who go into a state of shock after looking at the OSH site's accident-porn.

* Email Shelley Howells

International Guild of Knot Tyers

Peter Suber's Knots on the Web

Civil Defence

Dr Aargh's Little Workshop of Horrors