hello my name is Greg Willis and I'm one of the cofounders of Rosario army a non-profit Catholic apostolate dedicated to making praying and giving away all twined knotted rosaries like this one it is our hope that more people will start making and giving away these kinds of easy to make rosaries with the goal of getting more people to spend time with this wonderful prayer and effort to grow closer to Jesus Christ and this short video will explain the basics of making enough of an ultra line knotted rosary all you need to get started is about well 20 feet of number 36 twine to make a full rosary or about five feet of number 36 trying to make a single decade rosary a quick trick is to tape the ends of your rosary to make this a little easier for you now if you're ready let's make a roux and here's what your final product is going to look like is an alts wine knotted rosary with a metal crucifix on the end of it the first knot is an our Father knot which we attach the crucifix directly to that then there's the three Hail Marys at the beginning and our Father and then they centerpiece knot which leads up to the main corpus of the Rosary each decade obviously has ten knots in it and then in our Father in between each decade there are five decades total on a standard grocery okay so let's get going here the first thing you want to do is just take your twine and fold it right in half and find the middle point of the twine next you're going to take your index finger of your left hand and put it right on the middle of the twine and make an X wrap that twine around your finger lightly and make an X and you'll wrap it around two more times for three loops total around your index finger let's do that again you wrap it on your finger and make an X knot like this and you don't want to wrap it towards the end of your fingertip you wrap it around your finger make an X wrap it around two more times I'll kind of pinch it lightly with your left hand with your thumb and index finger and find the end of the twine that you just wrapped around your index finger there it is with our piece of tape on that we suggested now we want to put it in the back of those three loops like you're going towards your fingertip now put it through all three loops and then pull the entire length of twine through all three loops take your time and pull it slowly at first now keep holding on to with your left hand and see how it's kind of resting lightly on my left index finger and I could slide it right off because I didn't have it too tight before and now I'm slowly pulling with my right hand see if those fingers my middle finger my ring finger my pinky just kind of pulling on that twine a little bit I'm not doing any drastic moves I'm just slowly pulling on it while my right thumb and index finger kind of pushes the knot and makes it smaller and I kind of give it a tug when I get a good grip with your left thumb and finger and then pull hard you want to make sure you hold on to that night not when you tighten it you hold it with your left hand you pull the string with it with the right hand now put the twine and then knot that you just made right on that fleshy part of your finger for your second knot and wrap it around your finger again just as before you made the X and then you wrap it around three more times bring the twine back through those three loops from the back from the back always and pull it out slowly away from your hand and we did that kind of quick so feel free to pause and rewind at this point watch how we made that knot and then the second one right after it again the fingers are just slowly pulling on that string not twisting it not doing it too quickly and it's in place right now and it looks like a good knot right well you still need to hold on to it tightly you want to make sure you have enough space in between the two knots kind of get your finger in there they're not too close they're not too far away and then hold on to it tight grab that twine with your right hand and give it a good hard tug those knots are nice and tight and they're not going to be sliding anywhere make sure they're nice and tight now let me show you what happens if you were to make your knot and you don't tighten it by holding on to the knot a lot of people make this mistake their first time so pay attention here we make the knot just as normal but a lot of times people won't hold on to the knot when they tighten it they'll kind of grab at either end of the knot like i'll grab here on on either side and i'm going to give it a tug and you see how that knot those two knots split apart from each other and there's that wide space sometimes you can have an even wider space than that so you want to make sure you hold on to it we'll do it again hold on to that knot and give it a good hard tug while you're holding on to it we're just going to watch for a minute here as we make the the next few knots in this decade so you can kind of see how after a while the more you practice the faster you'll get you might have noticed I did a little trick right there instead of grabbing the end of the twine I pinched the twine in my right hand near the loop and kind of folded it in half and ran the fold through the loops I don't want to confuse you too early but that's a trick that maybe as you have more experience you can do it later on watch I'll do it again I pinched it and ran that loop through and then the end of the twine came through last but for now just make the loops while you make that X you wrap it three times around your fingers you take the end of the twine and you run it through just like that and then always making sure that the knots are staying in place where I want them because I grab on to the knot and then I tighten it I'm going to finish up that decade and then we'll move on to making the Our Father knot there's my decade all 10 it may look like a silly little trick but I always go 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 makes a lot easier to count and you I've suggested you count on a regular basis too it's always a shame whenever someone sends us a beautiful beautiful rosary and we discover there's only 9 knots in a decade so now for the Our Father you see it's the same process I just wrapped it around my finger but I did it five times instead of three I made the X and then I wrapped it around my finger five times it's Delmas the exact same process except there's two more loops to make it a little bit bigger for the Our Father then you pull the string same as before through the back and pull the twine through all five loops this time since you're making an our Father knot pull all the string through I got a little tangled up there that'll happen but then just keep pulling it through and you have the five loops now watch same process slowly pulling on that twine underneath while my right thumb and index finger is pushing it into place with my left index finger and thumb I guide it to make sure that you don't want those loops to get tangled up see how they're always staying aligned that's because I keep guiding it with my left index finger and thumb you left the next finger and thumb when you're tightening a knot is pretty much just to guide it and make sure that the knots don't get tangled up you don't want those loops of your knot to interlace you always want them to stay nice and parallel to each other and you'll have a nice clean not if they start getting tangled up you might want to get into the practice of just going ahead and undoing your knot and remaking it your rosaries will look a lot cleaner and you're not sewing to be able to tighten a lot nicer now I'm left some space from the first decade to the Our Father and then a little bit more space from the Our Father to the next decade and I made the first Hail Mary for the next decade and I'm going to go ahead and finish that off you make three decades in one direction and then two in the other as you'll see here so now there's my decade and our father another decade and our father another decade and no our father on that point and we're going to flip your twine over and you're going to go back to your very first knot that you made but first let's look at a trick here we're going to line up two decades next to each other and this is a way that you can make sure that all your knots will always be in alignment and your rosary will have nice even spacing right there the top one is a little bit shorter than the bottom so what you can do is kind of grab it pull it you can still separate the knots a little bit even though you tighten them really well before so now they're nice and aligned and we'll check to other decades line them up next to each other and those look pretty good also but I'll give it a slight tug to even it off more and that's pretty good so now that we've checked our decades now we flip it over and that's your very first knot right there that's the first one you made when you folded the twine in the middle and now we're going in the other direction see how I'm holding the twine with the knots in my hand now I've wrapped my finger wrap the twine around my finger five times for the Our Father knot and I come in from the back just as before three loops around your finger for a Hail Mary five loops around your finger for an our Father you see how my left hand is kind of helping to keep those aligned I'm not pinching it I'm not twisting or pulling on it just very gently I kind of keep pushing those little loops back into place while my right hand continues to pull the twine and tighten when I get it in place I grab on to it nice and tight pull with the right hand while I'm pinching that knot tight with my left hand and look see I have they're nice and lined up looks good now I'm going to go go ahead and make my other two decades in that direction and there it is when that amazing how I did those last two decades so quickly you can pause the tape at this point work on the rest of your rosary in a moment after we check our alignment all the way around we're going to make our centerpiece not it's going through and they all seem to be pretty lined up I'll give them a couple tugs make sure everything is staying exactly where I want it to be looks pretty good maybe a little tug down there and we're good to go okay now here's how you make your centerpiece not you want to take your first Hail Mary not in your last Hail Mary knot and put them next to each other you're going to make an X around your finger but using both pieces of twine both ends of twine go around your finger just twice this time but you're going around twice with both pieces of twine and now you'll pull both pieces of twine through that loop pull them both through the back just as you did with the Hail Marys and all the Our Fathers this is a slightly trickier one but if you keep your loops aligned and keep those two pieces of twine that you just ran through aligned see how they're all nice and lined up to each other if you do it nice and slow you'll have a nice clean centerpiece knot at the end now I have it in place now the trick to tightening it here is you hold the knot and you pull first one piece of twine and then you grab the other piece of twine and you pull that one two and I'll stay nice and in place now you want to find the longer of your two leftover pieces of twine always use the longer piece pull that shorter piece and hold that into the palm of your hand with all your other knots and then make an hour father knot around your finger just as before five loops around your finger pull the twine in through the back take your time and tightening it up you hold on to it with your right hand as you pull with your excuse me you hold on with your left hand while you pull with your right to tighten it leave a little bit of space and now you're going to make your three Hail Marys at the beginning of your rosary three loops around your finger come in through the back same movement over and over again one two three make the X one two three towards the palm of your hand and then you take that twine and you run it in through the back and out just like that and now we we have all three of our elm areas there we're going to make that our Father knot with the crucifix this is the most difficult knot but you can do it here's what you do you make that X then you do the five loops just like a regular our Father so far it looks the same take the end of your twine and you run it through the back and now here's where it's going to get different after you pull the twine through you want to hold on to those loops and have that piece of twine you don't tighten it yet now you have that end of the twine you're going to take a crucifix with an eyelet hole this one's about one and three or one and a half inches put the eyelet through or the twine through the eyelet and pull it all the way through and then we're going to get that crucifix right up by that not it's just dangling on there right now if you were to let go would slide right off the twine I'm going to take the end of the twine and put it back into the hole exactly where I just took it out this is the part that confuses people I'm going to put it right back into the hole this is the only not where you're going to go backwards when you're making the knot so you pulled it through one way now you're pulling it back out is if you're going toward your fingers see we have a nice loop now we took it out put the crucifix on put the twine back into the hole now don't pull on your crucifix here because you get those eyelets can sometimes be very weak I always want to pull on that twine loop but look what I'm doing same type of move it's just a little more confusing and look the loop and the right is getting bigger as I'm pulling so you want to make sure that you have enough space on the end or enough twine at the end to be able to do your loop is going to get bigger as you're tightening but here I'm going to stop now while they're not is still kind of big look at that long loop I just made after I already had shortened it now here's what you do because it's not to tighten on the knot I can pull that twine and shorten that loop so now I have a fairly small loop again now I'm going to give it a tug and tighten that knot just a little bit not tightening it all the way yet and I'm going to shorten that loop a little bit now I'm going to grab the twine not the crucifix the twine right there hold on to it with my left hand pull that twine with my right shorten a little bit if I can I can hold on to that twine I'll give it another tug shorten you just keep working it until you have it just like that a small little loop holding your crucifix in place and want to make sure that last knot is good and tight so it never comes undone and so your crucifix doesn't fall off so now I have these two leftover pieces of twine what do I do with them well the best way of doing it is to hold on to it take a pair of scissors first I'm just cutting it isn't enough if you leave at the ends of these get very frayed that's why at the beginning we like to have tape on the end of our twine so it's still a little frayed right there but we'll take care of that in a minute well take this other piece of twine and cut that off now you want to hold on to that scrap you can send it to Rose your army and we'll send it to other people for them to practice maybe act as an incentive for them to learn how to make rosaries too but you take that end and take a lighter and just lightly singe it just like that nothing to Bunch same thing here I'm going to find out little frayed end that I just cut and you don't want to burn the knot you don't want to burn the twine just kind of get it near that singe it just like that and I give it a little poke just to flatten it down and again a little bit not too much don't touch the knot and don't let it touch the twine just flatten it down and that my friends is how you make an alt wine knotted rosary like the kind that we give away from rosary army you can also take a metal like a miraculous metal or divine mercy metal and you can attach it right on that little piece of twine right there right above the centerpiece not and there is your finished rosary congratulations I certainly hope that this video helped you to understand a little bit how easy it is to make it all twine knotted rosary so now you have next one you can go out mix some more pray them and keep giving them away thanks again for listening I hope this video did help from all of us rosary army god bless