House of Knotty

House of Knotty was founded in 2023 by Shibari Shawn, a gay rope educator based in Seattle who leads its teaching. His studio biography says he started tying in 2016 with the Friction Iowa group in Cedar Rapids and began teaching in 2019 through the Homer Shibari Dojo in Alaska. He describes his aim as demystifying and decolonizing rope teaching, bringing queer history into it and giving more room to people who tie on masculine bodies. He also co-organizes RopeLab: Seattle, a monthly men’s group for intermediate and advanced riggers, and lists teaching at gatherings in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland and Austin.

The studio sits in the old Rainier Brewery building in the SoDo district. Classes run in quarterly blocks. Beginner evenings on Saturdays need no prior experience and cover one topic each, such as bedroom bondage, chest harnesses, predicament ties, chair bondage or strappado. Before registering, students complete a short online pre-class on consent, communication, risk profiles and house rules. Intermediate Sunday classes assume single and double column ties and go through positions such as the hogtie, agura, crab tie and a futomomo-based partial suspension, with an emphasis on aesthetics: modular tying, managing the nawajiri, minimalism and wabi-sabi. In the autumn 2026 quarter both class series cost $20 per session (class pages, accessed November 2026).

For longer study the studio forms suspension cohorts of five or six tying pairs that meet monthly for six two-hour sessions, with required homework between classes; riggers are strongly encouraged, but not required, to keep the same partner throughout. A separate semenawa cohort builds a reverse-tension gote toward several static suspensions on bamboo; the studio itself calls it high-risk and not for everyone. Both cohort types were listed at $600 per tying pair in November 2026.

The community side includes a monthly rope jam on second Mondays, open to all levels and all genders, with bamboo and ring hard points for suspension; it is an adults-only event where each tying pair carries its own risk and consent agreements. A Sunday “Shibari Tea Dance” borrows the name of the mid-century LGBTQ+ afternoon gatherings and pairs brunch with rope socializing. Shibari Shawn states that he has adopted the KEMS educator code of conduct.