Saturday, March 7, 2009

Catching up with the Past


Today I realized that macrame is still around - a special group in Ravelry and plenty of sites on the Internet. It reminded me of the sixties and early seventies, when macrame was hot and if you did not sport a planter in your living space you did not qualify for being hip, as it was called back then. I taught myself with the help of the useful book The Ashley Book of Knots - 3000 of them. And there was "Far beyond the Fringe", hinting at the extremely popular, totally crazy 60s series "Beyond the Fringe". For the girls I macramed a rope tent, hung from the ceiling. Never made a pot hanger though. The pictures shows one of six napkin rings I made for my Mom in 1972, the colors matched her tea china. It is about 40 cm long and held the napkin in the wooden ring; once the napkin was taken out it served as a table decoration.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I love incorporating Macrame especially with crystal beads in bracelets and necklaces. Didn't know it is even on Ravelry...then again why not?

Enjoy your 4-week retreat...I know it's not like vacation. Feather & Fan is a beautiful classic stitch and relatively mindless. I look foward to seeing it upon your return, Laura. And, best wishes for your hubby's recovery. He is lucky to have you, devoting wife and friend!

Happy Spring!

Blessings,
Sarah

juliet... said...

When I was a girl, my mother thought it would be wonderful to have a huge macrame hanging in our beach cabin. She found a net float on the beach to incorporate into the project ~ it probably gave her the idea for the project to begin with. So in the 1970s every summer vacation my sister and I were mom's child labor ~ work, work, work on that damn macrame. Each summer dad would take the macrame project out and hang it from the neighbor's old cedar tree ~ there was one limb that was at the perfect height. One summer (after the macrame rage ended) the limb was gone ~ my sister and I figured that the old neighbor lady was trying to save us from macrame hell. Now, some 35 years later, the partially completed "hanging" is still back in the old shed behind the cabin. It's funny how "now" I think it would be cool to have the completed "hanging" in the cabin. Hummmmm, my sister has two kids.....hummmmm, yes they do come to the cabin every summer......hummmmm.....enough said, I think.....

Laura said...

Dear Juliet, thank you so much for your wonderful flashback story! As it is, I might be a distant cousin to your mother's... things do come in circles, a net float, how rustic and perfect for a cabin... it could be done... bit by bit... are we catching our childhood in a macramee net?