Don’t look now, but macrame may be back

Remember macrame? Don’t panic. It isn’t making a comeback – or maybe it IS – I did see a macrame handbag on the shoulder of a woman walking in a parking lot. In a recent issue of Harper’s Bazaar, I also saw a photo of a pink chiffon dress designed by Alberta Ferretti. The bodice sported a knotted detail, which looks a lot like macrame. That an haute couture fashion designer used knotting to embellish a to-die-for dress prompted me to revisit macrame and other knots I have known.

Macrame is the art of tying, tightening and embellishing knots, which may result in something functional – such as the yards of plant pot hangers my children and I produced in the 1970s. Or that ye-gods-awful window curtain I blithely knotted of some shiny white synthetic fiber and embellished with orange wooden beads. Oh, that fuzzier-than-thou fringe that snared every mote of dust! At that time, tres chic handbags and belts also were fashioned of macrame, but I never attempted the intricacies of those items.

Although the craft is seen less often today than it was in the 1970s, crafters still use macrame in designing bead jewelry. Bracelets fashioned of embroidery floss, and sometimes worn by teenagers, are based on macrame techniques.

In China, where it is an art form, knotting has been around for thousands of years. The Chinese used knots for recording events and for decoration as well as for fastening and wrapping. Knots decorated the chairs the emperor and empress used, as well as sedan chairs, parasols, fans and mirrors. Some knots, such as the button knot, functioned to fasten clothing together. Knots symbolized the emotional ties of lovers and couples exchanged ornamental knots as keepsakes.

American knotting is a whole lot more prosaic.

“Macrame,” said Nina, a clerk at Craft World in Bangor, which sells macrame supplies, “is more popular in spring and summer when people are re-stringing lawn chairs or making plant hangers.”

I first became aware of the mysteries and uses of knots as a child watching my mother tie up brown paper packages with string. She’d demonstrate the square knot and let me practice. My job was to put my finger on the first part of the knot to hold it tight while she finished tying the knot. I also watched my father tie his canoe to the car after he’d loaded it onto the roof rack.

“That’s a bowline,” he’d say, and soon, I could tie one, too.

One of my childhood treasures was a length of cotton clothesline rope I used to practice knot tying, including the hangman’s noose, a knot whose macabre associations gave me a gleeful sense of having violated the RULES.

As an adult, learning macrame enlarged my knot-tying vocabulary – double half hitch, lark’s head, overhand. I screwed a plant pot hook into a ceiling beam in the kitchen for a macrame work place. When I wasn’t stirring a batch of raspberry jam or taking cookies out of the oven, I tied square knots. Wasn’t long before my children and half the neighborhood had learned macrame, too. We had plants swinging dizzily from our pot hangers hanging all over the house, inside and out.

Eventually, I fizzled out on macrame and, apparently, so did everyone else. But now that I have found a pattern for a macrame hammock at http://myweb.ecomplanet.com, I just may try it again.

Snippets

Purple Fleece in Searsport is accepting reservations for weeklong “learning vacations.” Participants can take classes in spinning and weaving. Learn more by calling Deborah Bergman at 323-1871 or visit www.PurpleFleece.com.

Sharpen your scrapbooking skills by taking a class at Hampden Adult Education. The class begins today at 6 p.m. Call 862-6422 for details.

Quilters and fabric artists looking for hand-painted cotton fabrics may find just what they need at Downeast Hand Dyes in Camden. Call 236-8719 for information.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.