If you haven't read Heather Bailey's tutorial on making a knot for hand sewing, you must check it out.  I stumbled on it a couple months ago and it's totally changed my attitude towards hand sewing and embroidery.

Before, I would make knots by wrapping the thread around my finger a couple of times and then I would roll it off with my thumb.  I would get a big clumpy mess, or maybe no knot at all.  I ended up wasting a lot of thread.  I hated knots so much that I would make my initial piece of thread really long so I wouldn't need to knot again for a while.

Now I make a perfect knot every time.  It makes embroidery quicker.  I don't waste thread.  I have neat little knots to hide instead of rat's nests of thread. The best is that I can use my short left-over thread because I can make a neat knot right at the end of it.

I'm going to participate in Red Button Tree's embroidered patch swap.  As sad as it sounds, I probably wouldn't have considered participating if I didn't know about this knot.  This will be my first group swap.  I'm planning on making three patches (the more you send, the more you get).  If you are interested, get over there and get the info.  You have until November 15th to send her your patches.