Seduced once again by another kit. This time it’s macrame. The kit is to make a plant pot and macrame holder. I’ve had the kit for a while so this weekend I got it out and got going.
This is another Sculpd kit, and as well as the clay for making a pot, this one contains stuff for making a macrame plant pot holder. The stuff all comes from a company called Wool and the Gang. There’s a ball of raffia, a crotchet hook, a trigger ring, a needle and some instructions
I had thought I’d make the pot first but then thought I might be better making the holder, I could then make sure I made something to fit in it. First off, I was quite surprised at the macrame material, it’s pretty thin, I was expecting something a little more substantial. Wool and the Gang call it ra ra rafia and it’s in a neutral colour (desert palm). The instructions are pretty flimsy too. Some basics in a small leaflet with lots of promises of online tutorials. Anyway, I stuck my specs on and got going.
Getting started was pretty difficult. The raffia is thin and difficult to work with. The instructions say to use it double. This makes it doubly difficult to work with. The instructions turned out to be pretty inadequate for a beginner so I went to look for the online instructions…which were equally as thin.
The Wool and the Gang website has limited tutorials on macrame and none that are relevant for this project (there’s one tutorial on making a plant pot holder which is completely different to this one and uses totally different material). There was absolutely nothing on the basics. I had to resort to looking elsewhere on the internet for how to do the basic stuff. After several false starts I finally managed to get a bit of an idea of what I was doing and start to construct a length of macrame. I need to create 4 lengths of around 3.5 metres each. I thought it was going to take me days! But, I did get better, and faster, as time went on and within a couple of hours I had a couple of strings of about 3.5 metres and was half way through another one.
Looking closely at the strings, you can see that they are pretty inconsistent. Not surprising for a beginner I think. I haven’t got the hang of keeping a consistent tension. I think this raffia stuff is pretty difficult for a beginner. Having to work with two strings at once is hard. I frequently only pull one strand through and miss another, meaning I have to unpick and do it again. It’s a bit frustrating.
However, I’ll persevere and see how I get on. At my current speed, I should be able to get the first 4 strands completed in another hour and can then move on to the next stage.
Tartantastic 
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