Tuesday Tidbits

Handicraft, Part 1 ~ Macrame’

Like a few other things in my life lately, macrame’ has come full circle. Ever since I was young, I’ve loved being creative and the process of creating things with my hands – from all types of artwork and crafts to writing, photography, gardening, etc. I got into macrame’ in the late 60s, and when I was 17 I taught a macrame’ class to high school aged campers. For many years after that – into the 70s – I continued creating wall hangings, hanging tables, plant hangers, belts & guitar straps, bracelets… a few commissions.

I’ve never thought before about why there was an almost 40 year lapse until I began knotting again just a couple of years ago. My educated, gut feeling guess as to why the long interruption is probably just that I raised a family and held a full time job for many years and some things just had to give. Not to say that I went years without being actively creative. I’m not even capable of that! I dabbled in lots of things, just not macrame’. (Insert shrug here.)

Before the pandemic arrived, I had finally gotten back to knotting again. I was creating quite a lot of pieces and showing my work at a monthly Art & Music event. However, this particular muse has been on hiatus since around the time COVID arrived on the scene. It’s strange that when you can have all the time in the world to create while being home-bound, you can just not feel it or feel motivated enough to create. Instead, after a couple months, I picked up a brand new muse (for me) of Dot Painting. I used acrylics, various substrates & tools, created mandalas, abstracts, decorative pieces. I immersed myself in learning the craft and spent lots of hours working late into the night on meticulous detail work and loved doing it. But, I digress.

So, yes… I delved heavily back into macrame’ for a while, and created a name for my business, “Knot Guilty”. I do intend to get back to it again in the future because I really love the craft. That will need to be after I’ve moved north next year and have settled into my new off-grid tiny log cabin in the mountains. My priority these next six months is to purge and clear, downsize big time, and get my home ready to sell. Still, I digress once again.

Here are a few of my recent macrame’ pieces…