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Hi, I'm Darryll and I live in Pullman, Washington with my wife and two kids. I'm a licensed Architect and am employed as a Project Manager at Washington State University. In addition, I have my own business doing residential designs in the greater Palouse area. I am a self-taught pianist, song-writer and singer and am involved in the music department at my local church.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The wonderful world of macrame'

Growing up in the ‘70s, I pursued a lot of the things that were popular during those years. It seems like everyone back then had house plants. Spider plants, Wandering Jews and lots of different types of ivy were very popular. All of us kids even had them. There were all sorts of cool clay pots and old rusty metal pots and wood box holders that we would plant them in. We even used Miracle Grow (in its early years, I believe) to help them along… a few drops from the little eye dropper, stir it up and water the plants with it.



Displaying our plants was a thing of pride, and macramé plant hangers were a very popular way to do this. You could buy them in all the great colors of the era – gold, burnt orange, avocado green, dark reds, etc. but the best was using natural jute. Being a creative type of guy, this eventually led to me wanting to make my own plant hangers. So – I bought a big roll of jute and some magazines that had patterns to follow and began my Macramé creating forays.


I was able to make hangers for friends and family members as gifts. I also found a pattern that made a nice wine bottle holder, a total of 8 bottles, cork down, attractively displayed. I actually ended up selling a bunch of these to friends of my mom and grandma. I made a little money and had a fun time doing it. Yup – did my part to contribute to the various bric-a-brac and decorations that helped to define the decade.


…I still have a box with all the jute, patterns, even my records from the ones I sold. I don’t think I’ll ever get back into making macramé hangers, but if I do, I guess I still equipped and ready to go.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Yep, I had a macrame plant holder in my bedroom. A few of my friend's mom's took macrame classes. My mother had the more formal "Plant Stand" in the living room. Of course, one of my chores was to water the plants. Oh, and we did have the requisite plant on top of the tv set.

rvances said...

I have been looking everywhere for the pattern for the Wine Bottle Holder that you described. I looked through all my booklets and couldn't find it. Could you please tell me what book it's in?

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Blast from the Past said...

rvances -

I found the directions for the wine rack! I actually just came across it 2 years ago when we moved and I had put it in my file cabinet. It's actually just hand-written instructions with a hand drawing, but I'd be happy to send you a pdf if you give me an email address,