Result from a rope tutorial on BlenderNerd (<a />blendernerd.com/making-a-rope</a>)
Made a tut on hiding seams the other day - http://blendernerd.com/hiding-uv-seams/
also, judicious use of seams plus converting your texture to tileable can help hide where the texture wraps around... here is the seamless noose I did following Greg's tuts: http://www.flickr.com/photos/petercarrero/6931866893/in/photostream/
Ok but the rope has seams and looks like it was cut