This is a tale of love.
A few months ago, I ordered the knife I mentioned above.
I knew the handle wasn’t bound and wondered how best to wrap it. One of my close friends at work is very good at doing things with his hands, so I brought him the knife, semi-jokingly sent him a bunch of YouTube videos on ‘ornamental coxcombing’, the kind of rope-tying techniques 19th century shipwrights used, and left him to it.
Seven weeks later and after a few increasingly impatient queries from me, he’s reported back with the following:
“Well, it’s been involved. First, I watched about seven hours of the YouTube videos and bought some thin plasticky rope and a vice and made some blade-protectors out of an old tire, and I practiced the knotting over the course of about three days on broom handles and rolling pins before trying it on the knife. Then, when I thought I had the technique down OK, I decided the rope gauge was too thick and it didn’t look good, so I went to three different Bunnings hardware shops to try to find different kinds of rope thicknesses and re-did it. I re-did it about four or five times after that, but I still didn’t think it was good enough, so I then went to a specialist boating shop and bought some 5mm yachting twine. That was the right thickness and everything, but then the ends were fraying every time, so I tried burning them off, but it looked shit, and then I tried covering them in wax, and I didn’t like that either, so then I tried binding the rope ends in fishing wire and using needle-nose pliers to do the pushing through.
THEN I realised that the handle of the knife is just slightly curved, which meant the rope was sitting up slightly higher on one end than the other, so I went to a chemist and bought a syringe and injected acrylic cement underneath the last knots to raise them slightly. Well, I had to go to the chemist four times because the first needles I bought were far too thin to push the acrylic through. I’m pretty sure they thought I was a smack addict. Then, when I asked you to send me a photo of where they’ll go and I saw you’ve mounted your knife block on the left and you’re right handed? That’s why I’ve put the knots on that side. Anyway, here it is and it's for you and I hope you like it."
Now that’s a man who loves me. 
