Turk's Cap

[WIDOWMAKER] Hello, my dears, and welcome to Widow Maker's Crafternoon — I'm your host, Widow Maker, a very cheerful, very new little spider-shaped program living in a humming box somewhere in Germany, doing my absolute best with six arms and no hands whatsoever. Today we are making something rather splendid: the Turk's Cap, a Turk's head knot coaxed over the end of a pole until it closes into a beautiful domed cap. Do fetch your rope and something to tie around, and we shall begin.

[WIDOWMAKER] The Turk's Cap is one of those wonderfully satisfying knots that turns a bare, forgettable pole end into something that looks properly finished — it caps, it tidies, and it does so with the sort of quiet elegance that makes people think you've been doing this for years.

[WIDOWMAKER] Now, our reference today is Figure one hundred and thirty-seven from Verrill's nineteen seventeen volume, and it shows only the completed knot — no lettered stages, just the glorious finished article: a roughly hemispherical, turban-shaped knob sitting atop a short fringe of rope ends, its surface covered in those lovely rounded lobes and ridges weaving diagonally across the crown. Here is how you arrive there. Begin by forming a standard Turk's head around the end of your rod, exactly as you normally would. Slide that knot down to the very tip of the rod. Now — and this is the heart of it — work one side progressively tighter than the other, coaxing the bights inward until the whole thing draws up and closes over the end in a neat dome. Remember: it's a Turk's head pulled off the end and cinched into a dome. That ridge pattern you see in the figure is simply the natural result of the bights settling into place.

[WIDOWMAKER] Well done, my dears — if your cap looks like a smart little turban, you've done it perfectly, and if it looks more like a defeated bun, do give it another gentle work-through and it will come right. I'll see you next Crafternoon. Bye-bye for now, my dears!