The deck came with a plant hanging hook that was perfect for the little pot of flowers. We straightened and sorted almost all day this past Sunday and early on I unearthed some cotton yarn, suitable for the purpose and in desirable colors (unlike the red/cream/ecru stuff which was all I’d found before). I made this up as I went along and it would be perhaps overly gracing it to call it “macrame,” but it is a plant hanger made by knotting yarn.

Instructions behind the cut (if you’re on a blog archive page).

My lengths were determined by what I had available, but they worked very well. My original yarn strands were about 14 1/2 feet long, which I doubled and tied overhand at each end. Then I crossed the doubled strands and tied them to hold them together. If I were doing this again that is the step I would change most substantially: I would cross two through two and then tie them each close to the crossover, instead of only crossing each through one or two of the others and tying them further out.

After that I would still make knots about 2″ from the crossover point, which is roughly where my first knots were (photo 1), and continue as I did: knots 4″ from the previous set (photo 2) and knots 3″ further out than that (photo 3). My pot was about 7″ across at the top and if you have a larger pot it’s the 3″ distance to increase.

Each time I tied knots I tied them between different pairs of (doubled) strands, partly for stability and partly for looks.

After I set the pot into the basket I brought all the strands up together, settling things so the pot would hang flat, and tied three tight overhand knots at the top. I trimmed my yarn ends (with the original knots holding the doubled strands together) above the third knot, and hung the pot by putting the hook between the lower two knots. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes, and that was with photographing.

If you have a heavier pot I would add another strand to each doubled set, and if you have a much larger pot than mine, you should add more around. A fifth set of strands would take you far.

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The pattern was wonderful and I highly recommend it. It uses only lark’s head knots, half hitches, and square knots, and the diagrams are clear enough I didn’t need any supplemental material, even though this was my first macrame project (odd, since my mother did a fair bit of macrame when I was young). I did use a different macrame resource to confirm I was interpreting the diagrams correctly, but I was.

The pattern calls for crochet thread, and I used sport weight yarn. I wasn’t sure what the length conversion would be, so I cut pieces at least two yards long. I didn’t need to; I had well over half the original length left over. However, it was convenient to have the extra weight – with the end of the yarn wound on bobbins to keep the strands from tangling together.

I used bamboo skewers for the top and bottom rods, and beads from my stash for the eyes. Instead of putting glue on the ends of the yarn to turn them into needles, I folded a length of thin wire in half to use as a threader. I stuck it through the bead, put the yarn through the folded end of the wire, and pulled it through.

Here’s a picture of when it first started looking like something. I added pins to keep the fold in step 6 in place until it was knotted up.

I found the pattern via the Macrame Lovers blog. It updates sporadically (and hasn’t for over a year) but has a decent number of patterns both locally and linked around the web.

[I accidentally categorized this as crochet and then linked to it from elsewhere, so it will stay in crochet to keep those links valid.]

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