What This Class Is and What You'll Walk Out With
So this is a macrame class, which around here still gets a raised eyebrow. That's fine. I got the same look when I started.
Here's the honest version of how I ended up teaching this. My wife Deborah picked up macrame a few years back, and then her hands started giving her trouble with the arthritis, and it got hard for her to finish the knots. I didn't want a half-done wall hanging sitting on the table making her feel bad about it, so I picked it up where she left off. Turned out I liked it. I'm musical, always have been, and knotwork uses the same part of your brain as learning a song. You repeat it until your hands know it and you stop thinking about it. That's most of what this class is: getting your hands to that point.
What we're actually doing
Four knots. That's it. Lark's head, square knot, a couple half hitch variations. You'll learn them the first night, slow, and then you'll spend the rest of the class doing them over and over on your own piece until they stop feeling foreign.
I'm not going to hand you a printed pattern with forty steps and a diagram that looks like sheet music. Most beginner patterns are more complicated than the thing they're trying to make. Learn the four knots and you can freestyle something that looks better than anything printed, honestly. I'll show you a few layouts to get you started and then mostly get out of your way.
By the end you'll walk out with one finished wall hanging, on a dowel, ready to put a nail in the wall for. Not a kit you finish at home eventually. Finished. I care about that more than I probably should.
What you'll need
- Cotton cord, not the synthetic stuff. It looks fine in the store but it's slippery, your knots slide around on you, and it squeaks while you work, which drives me up a wall. Cotton holds its shape and costs about the same.
- A wooden dowel. Buy it, don't cut it yourself unless you've got a real saw at home. A rough cut snags the cord and it shows. We'll sand the ends in class either way. Dry air out here means more splinters than you'd expect, so don't skip that step.
- Scissors, a comb if you've got one, a tape measure.
I'll have extra of everything for the first night in case you show up empty-handed. That's not a burden, bring what you can.
How the room works
I don't teach from the front much. I'll demo a knot slow, twice, then walk around and work on your hands one at a time. If you're struggling nobody's going to call it out, I'll just crouch down next to you and we'll sort it out quietly.
Saturday mornings are actually how Deborah and I still do this at home. We've got the radio going in the kitchen, we'll dance a little between rounds, and she sits at the table sorting cord by color while I tie. She's got a much better eye for color than I do, always has. I pick natural cord and one accent color and call it a day. If you want real color guidance, that's not really my department. I know my gaps.
One opinion I'll plant now because it saves people grief later: don't precut all your cord before you start tying. Everybody wants to, it feels productive, cut it all and get going. Then you're eight inches short on every single strand and starting over. Cut one length, tie a full row with it, then cut the rest to match. Measure twice. I mean it about the cord specifically, not just as a saying.
What this isn't
This isn't an art class and I'm not an artist. I'm a guy who ties knots and got decent at four of them. If you want fancy circular starts, magic rings, that kind of thing, I'll be straight with you, mine still don't behave. I fudge them and tell people to fudge them too. There are other classes for that. This one's about getting something finished with your hands, cheap materials, and no pressure to make it perfect.
This is a weekend project. I'd rather you finish something a little crooked than have a beautiful half-done piece sitting on a table for six weeks making you feel bad every time you walk past it. Fringe gets trimmed last, once, on the wall, not early out of nerves. Waste bothers me more than it should, and an abandoned project is wasted cord.
Before next time: just bring yourself, and if you've already got cotton cord sitting around from another project, bring that too, no sense buying new if you've got some.