Somewhere in Melbourne, Australia, a man calling himself "Professor Shoelace" has spent more than twenty years building the most thorough shoelace resource on Earth. He is completely serious about it. It is completely wonderful.
Ian Fieggen's site opens with a small declaration that feels almost radical now: "This website has no AI content — it's all built with HI (Human Intelligence) plus HE (Human Effort)." Made by one human, for all humans.
And the depth is staggering. Over 100 step-by-step lacing tutorials, more than 2,800 photos of real shoes laced in every pattern imaginable, an interactive "Create-a-Lace" tool for designing your own, and a whole section on the construction of shoelaces themselves, including a braiding simulator and a length calculator so you never buy the wrong size again. Yes, there is a page about what the plastic tips on the ends are called. (They're aglets.)
The knots are the main event. Ian catalogs 25 of them, including his own invention, the Ian Knot, which he calls the world's fastest way to tie a shoe. He also explains something most of us never learned: if your laces keep coming undone and sit crooked, you're probably tying a granny knot without knowing it. Check the "Granny Knot" page and prepare to feel personally called out.
The visitor feedback is the best part. A man in Germany writes that after viewing the site, he finally learned to tie a good knot at age 60. A worker in Oregon says a bow variation stayed tied through a 14-hour shift in steel-toe boots. A reader in the U.S. says he used the secure knot for years without a single failure, adding that if you'd told him in 1958 a mate in Australia would show him a better way to tie his shoes, he wouldn't have believed it.
There's even a quiet victory tucked into the update log: after twenty years of running Google ads to pay the bills, Ian removed them in June 2026, thanks to enough visitors supporting the site with donations.
Somewhere on your feet right now is a knot you've never questioned. It might be time to.